19 th century chronology

7/27/2019 19 Th Century chronology

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19th Century EnglandA Brief Overview


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18th Century Enlightenment

Ideals

Reason

Toleration

Natural Law

Change and Progress as good things

Deism.


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Enlightenment Ideas Francis Bacon (1561-1626), sometimes called "Father of Modern

Science,believed that natural philosophy (what we call science) couldbe applied to the solution of practical problems.

For Bacon, the problem was this: how could humans enjoy perfectfreedom if they had to constantly labor to supply the necessities ofexistence? His answer was clear -- machines. These labor savingdevices would liberate humankind, they would save labor which thencould be used elsewhere.

"Knowledge is power," said Bacon, and scientific knowledge revealspower over nature.

This vision was all-important. It was optimistic and progressive.

Humans were going somewhere, their lives had direction.


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Enlightenment & Revolution

This optimistic and progressiv attitude is implicit throughout the

Enlightenment and was made a reality during the French and IndustrialRevolutions.

The American and French Revolutions, building on enlightened ideas,

brought forth a cultural as well as an industrial revolution. Humankind

could now change society for the better.


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19th Century Intellectual HistoryPhilosophy and Ideology

European thinkers were becoming more aware of ancient thought.This development has a great deal to do with the development ofanthropology as well as Darwinian evolutionary theory.

Eastern thought began to pervade western ideas during the 19thcentury. Many of the British Romantic poets were quite taken witheastern ideas.

In general, new ideas and with them, a new vocabulary, enteredinto European intellectual discourse

Science

made new conquests, especially in the fields of geology, biology,botany and organic chemistry.

newest developments in the sciences were primarily in the physical

and life sciences, all founded in the early part of the 19th century. Another way of looking at science in the 19th century is to say that

whereas the 17th and 18th centuries were keen on investigatingNature from the standpoint of what was inorganic and heavenly, the19th century discovered and took a lively interest in what wasorganic, vital and living.


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Intellectual con

machine production, the factory system and the cash nexus

profoundly altered the social structure of England. This revolution inindustry -- the Industrial Revolution -- gave humankind a newconception of power in relation to the physical environment

And with industrialization and the development of industrialcapitalism, a whole new set of social, political, cultural andintellectual problems entered the European mind at all levels. Noone was left untouched by this revolution in industry.

Revolt

both philosophical and political, against traditional systems ofthought.

This revolt had two faces -- one was Romantic and stressed theirrational and unreason, the other was rationalistic and stressed

the human capacity of reason and rationality. The 18th century Age of Enlightenment was firmly entrenched inthe capacities of Human Reason. But by the end of the century andinto the early part of the 19th century, a reaction set in. Man wasnot a disembodied brain, a thinking machine, but an emotionaland organic individual. The man of reason became the newman of feeling.


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The Industrial Revolution in England

The Industrial Revolution of the late 18th and early 19th centuries

changed the productive capacity of England, Europe and United States.

But the revolution was something more than just new machinessmoke-belching factories, increased productivity and an increased

standard of living.

For many, the Industrial Revolution implied that humankind now had

not only the opportunity and the knowledge but the physical means to

completely subdue nature.

No one was left unaffected. Everyone was touched in one way or

another -- peasant and noble, parent and child, artisan and captain of

industry. As Harold Perkin has observed, "the Industrial Revolution was

no mere sequence of changes in industrial techniques and production,

but a social revolution with social causes as well as profound social

effects" [The Origins of Modern English Society, 1780-1880(1969)].


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A Time of Invention The first steamboat in Britain was Henry Bell's Comet on the Clyde in

1811.

George Trevithick created the first steam locomotive in 1801. In 1813George Stephenson created a better one.

In 1812, the parish of St. Margaret's in Westminster was lit by gas - bythe Gas, Light, & Coke Company. By 1815 there were 26 miles of gasmains in London. The factories in the Midlands were already lit by gas.

The November 29, 1814 edition of The Times was the first newspaperissue printed on a steam press.

Both Thomas Telford and John Loudon Macadam experimented withroad improvements. Macadam's methods were first used on the Bristolroads when he was appointed surveyor-general in 1815. The techniqueinvolved raising and draining the road level and laying down layers ofhard stones broken into very small pieces.

George Stephenson built the first public railways in the 1820s.

To learn more about transportation during the period go tohttp://www.literary-liaisons.com/article033.html
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Social & Cultural Consequences

Once engines and machines, the products of science, began torevolutionize the idea of progress itself, an even greater optimismbegan to develop.

Many wondered that if a simple machine can do the work of twentymen in a quarter of the time formerly required, then what might happennext?

The answer was not entirely what was expected.

While the Industrial Revolution brought its blessings, there was alsomuch misery. Revolutions, political or otherwise, are always mixed

blessings, and in addition to scientific and industrial changes, theIndustrial Revolution had a detriment effect on social relationships. Asthe mid-19th century Scottish critic Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) put it,the Industrial Revolution ushered in a society where the onlyconnection between men is the one of money, profit and gain.


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Socioeconomic & Cultural Change

Along with this great leap in technology, there was an overall downfallin the socioeconomic and cultural situation of the English people.

Growth of cities were one of the major consequences of the IndustrialRevolution. Many people were driven to the cities to look for work, inturn the ended living in the cities that could not support them.

With the new industrial age, a new quantitative and materialistic view ofthe world took place. This caused the need for people to consume asmuch as they could, living on small wages that required small childrento work in factories for long days.


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Workers Needed

As people were encouraged to consume as much as they

could,both the cost of such consumption and the increasing need

for production of goods brought about yet another social change:

small children working in factories for long days.


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Life of a Child Laborer

To overcome this labor shortage factory owners had to find other ways

of obtaining workers.

One solution to the problem was to buy children from orphanages and

workhouses. The children became known as pauper apprentices. This

involved the children signing contracts that virtually made them the

property of the factory owner.

Pauper apprentices were cheaper to house than adult workers.

Owners of large textile mills purchased large numbers of children from

workhouses in all the large towns and cities. By the late 1790s about a

third of the workers in the cotton industry were pauper apprentices.

Child workers were especially predominant in large factories in rural

areas.


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Dangers & Punishment Children who worked long hours in the textile mills became very tired

and found it difficult to maintain the speed required by the overlookers.

Children who were late for work were severely punished. If childrenarrived late for work they would also have money deducted from theirwages. Time-keeping was a problem for those families who could notafford to buy a clock. In some factories workers were not allowed tocarry a watch. The children suspected that this rule was an attempt totrick them out of some of their wages.

Children were usually hit with a strap to make them work faster.

In some factories children were dipped head first into the water cisternif they became drowsy.

Children were also punished for arriving late for work and for talking to

the other children.

Parish apprentices who ran away from the factory was in danger ofbeing sent to prison.

Children who were considered potential runaways were placed in

irons.


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Child Labor Laws The first Factory Act passed by the British Parliament was called "The Factory

Health and Morals Act, 1802" and applied principally, though not exclusively, to

apprentices in cotton and woolen mills. The preamble runs as follows:

"Whereas it hath of late become a practice in cotton and woolen

mills, and in cotton and woolen factories, to employ a great number of

male and female apprentices, and other persons, in the same building, in

consequence of which certain regulations are now necessary to preserve the

health and morals of such apprentices."

The regulations, briefly stated, were the following:

The master or mistress of the factory must observe the law.

All rooms in a factory are to be lime-washed twice a year and duly

ventilated.

Every apprentice is to be supplied with two complete suits of clothing with

suitable linen, stockings, hats and shoes.

The hours of work of apprentices are not to exceed twelve a day, nor

commence before six in the morning, nor conclude before nine at night.

They are to be instructed every working day during the first four years of

apprenticeship in reading, writing and arithmetic.

Male and female apprentices are to be provided with separate sleeping

apartments, and not more than two to sleep in one bed.

On Sunday they are to be instructed in the principles of the Christian

religion.


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Changing Social Patterns The Industrial Revolution brought with it an increase in population and

urbanization, as well as new social classes. The increase in populationwas nothing short of dramatic. England and Germany showed a growthrate of something more than one percent annually; at this rate thepopulation would double in about seventy years.

The general population increase was aided by a greater supply of foodmade available by the Agricultural Revolution, and by the growth ofmedical science and public health measures which decreased thedeath rate and added to the population base.

Until the Industrial Revolution, most of the world's population was rural.However, by mid-nineteenth century, half of the English people lived incities, and by the end of the century, the same was true of otherEuropean countries.

Between 1800 and 1950 most large European cities exhibitedspectacular growth.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century there were scarcely twodozen cities in Europe with a population of 100,000, but by 1900 therewere more than 150 cities of this size.


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Rise of Cities

The rise of great cities can be accounted for in various ways:

First, industrialization called for the concentration of a work force;and indeed, the factories themselves were often located where coalor some other essential material was available, as the Ruhr inGermany and Lille in northern France.

Second, the necessity for marketing finished goods created greaturban centers where there was access to water or railways. Such

was the case with Liverpool, Hamburg, Marseilles, and New York.

And third, there was a natural tendency for established politicalcenters such as London, Paris, and Berlin to become centers forthe banking and marketing functions of the new industrialism.


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Urban Growth Rapid growth of the cities was not an unmixed blessing. The factory

towns of England tended to become rookeries of jerry-built tenements,while the mining towns became long monotonous rows of company-

built cottages, furnishing minimal shelter and little more. The bad livingconditions in the towns can be traced to lack of good brick, the absenceof building codes, and the lack of machinery for public sanitation. But, itmust be added, they were also due to the factory owners' tendency toregard laborers as commodities and not as a group of human beings.

In addition to a new factory-owning bourgeoisie, the IndustrialRevolution created a new working class. The new class of industrialworkers included all the men, women, and children laboring in thetextile mills, pottery works, and mines. Often skilled artisans foundthemselves degraded to routine process laborers as machines beganto mass produce the products formerly made by hand. Generally

speaking, wages were low, hours were long, and working conditionsunpleasant and dangerous. The industrial workers had helped to passthe Reform Bill of 1832, but they had not been enfranchised by it.


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19th Century Class System

The population grew from 11 to 37 million in England during thenineteenth century. Factories created jobs which lured workers fromrural communities and immigrants from Scotland and Ireland. By 1901,nearly three-quarters of the population called the city their home.

The rigid class system of the past essentially fell asunder withindustrialization. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, England was anagrarian society. The aristocracy, also known as the gentry, owned allthe land. Although a small group, the gentry wielded the power andwealth. Anyone outside the upper class could not advance into it.

Tenant farmers could rent the land with the majority of men and womenworking as laborers and servants. The growth of factories meant anincrease in job opportunities as well as wages. The workers left their

rural life to become urban workers.


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The Middle Class Industry, job opportunities, increased wages, and vision opened the

way for a new class of citizenry by the 1850s - the middle class. Thisgroup consisted of factory owners, bankers, shopkeepers, merchants,

lawyers, engineers, and other professionals. The new class wasgaining power through economic and social means, not because ofinherited titles or lands as the aristocracy. They soon knocked on thedoor of the upper class, demanding entry into the realm of thepreviously privileged. These men and women felt that wealth and socialposition were theirs for the taking through discipline and hardcompetition.

Nineteenth century political and social reformer Samuel Smiles stated,"Individual effort, backed by austerity of life, would propel any man, nomatter what his origins, to success in this world."

The nouveau riche paraded their wealth through the possessions theyacquired. Beautiful homes were meticulously decorated externally and

from within. Decorative bric-a-brac, furnishings and wall treatmentsconveyed in nonverbal messages their position in society.

The middle class was also sensitive to fashion, displaying their goodfortune by the clothes they wore. The newly rich endeavored to paradetheir success by taking carriage rides through Hyde Park and walksalong the fashionable streets of London. They enjoyed other activities

including attending sporting events, picnics and drawing-room dinners.


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The Rise of the Middle Class

The Victorians set high standards for morality and respectability. The Victorians

viewed drunkenness with a disapproving eye in the nineteenth century.

Strict standards were enforced in the sexual morality arena. Sexual experiences,

particularly for women, were confined to the marriage bed. Any breath of sexual

scandal would destroy a womans reputation.

Numerous womens organizations fought against prostitution. Sadly, prostitution

was a supplemental form of income for many working-class girls.

The roles of men and women were clearly defined. Men worked outside the

home while women raised and reared the children. The man was strong and

intellectual while the woman was emotional, passive and fragile. The role of the

man was as protector to his wife and children.


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Mary ShelleyFrankenstein& Technology


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Biography (1797-1851) Born August 30, 1797 to political radicals William Godwin and Mary

Wollestonecraft.

Parents believed in communal property, the ideals of the FrenchRevolution, free love, and they were against marriage.

Mary Wollestonecraft was considered revolutionary because her workexposed the status of women as second-class citizens in the world, andcomplained about the injustices of the political system and of marriage.She was also considered scandalous because of several fairly publiclove affairs.

But Mary and William married 5 months before their only daughter wasborn. Mary Wollestonecraft died ten days later from an infection causedby birth complications. Her daughter was named Mary for her. Hermother died in childbirth.

Mary was brought up in a very intellectually stimulating, though notparticularly warm, environment. Shewas left to educate herselfamongst her father's intellectual circle, was, from her youth, educatedto become a literary figure.

She published her first poem at the age of ten


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Biography (continued) In June 1814 at 16 she and Percy Shelley, 22, a poet and a disciple of

her fathers, eloped to Europe together taking her stepsister with them,and leaving behind his young daughter, his very pregnant wife (with

whom he had also eloped when she was 16) and her very angry father.

The three of them traveled around Europe before returning to London.Mary gave birth several months later to a premature daughter who dies.

At the time of writing Frankenstein in 1816, the couple had moved tothe shores of Lake Geneva in Switzerland. They had an infant son,

William, who lived a few more years.

The group, plus Byrons personal doctor, Polidori, set up a ghost storywriting game.

Mary Shelley is all of 19.

The novel is published anonymously in 1818.


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Frankenstein: Production Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus was born out of a series of

conversations she had during the summer of 1816 with Percy Shelley,Lord Byron, and Dr. John Polidori.

In introduction to 1831 edition, Shelley cites conversations between P.Shelley and Byron about Erasmus Darwin ("they talked about theexperiments of Dr.Darwin") and Luigi Galvani ("perhaps a corpsewould be re-animated; galvanism had given token of such things") assources for her own idea of a reanimated human ("perhaps thecomponent parts of a creature might be manufactured, brought

together, and endued with vital warmth").

When asked to explain why he has created a monstrous life form (onethat would eventually destroy him), Shelley's Victor Frankenstein offersan explanation based on the concept of "species." "A new specieswould bless me as its creator," he says to Captain Walton in theopening pages of the novel.

Shelley clearly sees this attempt to create life as connected to thecreation of a species. Of course, Victor does not really create a newspecies at all; he creates a hybrid, a human being composed of theparts of other humans and other animals, since some of his rawmaterials come from the "slaughterhouse."
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Frankenstein

Shelley's creature presumably lacks a soul, at least in the minds ofmost of her 1818 readers. But when Victor considers the "race of

demons" that might populate the world if he goes through with his planto create a female companion for the "wretch," he clearly placesmonster reproductive biology at the center of his own anxieties.

These anxieties however, point to wider issues and questions about theproblem of speciation in the Romantic era.

Of course, Victor Frankenstein's creature does not bless him "as itscreator." In fact, the wretch turns on the creator and destroys him--aswell as everyone he loves--not because the monster is inherently evil,but because the "monster" never receives love from his creator, oreven a name. The human creator Victor never shows sufficient concernfor the life he has made, much less for other human (or animate) livesaround him.

Shelley's argument points toward respect for life--all life--as a crucialaspect of Romantic natural history.


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We often forget how recently humans have understood the basics oftheir own biological origins. Well into the nineteenth century, confusionabounded about the connection between human reproductiuon and

other forms of animal reproduction, as well as the roles played by bothparents in the origins of new individuals.

Since Gregor Mendel's genetic research was not available to thescientific community until around 1900, even Charles Darwin had toadmit only the fuzziest sense of how acquired characteristics might bepassed on from parent to offspring.

In addition, "monsters" and "freaks of nature" posed serious problemsfor any religious belief or scientific theory that demanded rigidconsistency on the part of the natural system.The appearance ofhumans with confusing racial characteristics, much less conjoined twinsor other developmental anomalies, caused fear and anxiety about the"souls" or the "purpose" of such beings.

Few people wanted to believe that humans came into existence in thesame way as chickens or lizards; even fewer wanted to admit that theprocess of "soul-making" was partly "genetic."

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continuedAs a result, strange theories abounded:

"freaks" were seen as divine punishment for the sins of the fathers (ormothers);

the mother's (or father's) state of mind at the moment of conception wassaid to determine the sex or the personality of the child;

mysterious "liquors" were described mixing in mysterious ways with ahuman egg, human homunculi (fully formed sperm creatures),

or combinations of matter and "spirit" to produce a new human animal.

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Romanticism The word conveys notions of sentiment and sentimentality, a visionary

or idealistic lack of reality. It connotes fantasy and fiction. It has been

associated with different times and with distant place.

Historians and critics as well as European historians have been

quarreling over the meaning of the word Romanticism for decades

The expression Romantic gained currency during its own time, roughly

1780-1850. However, even within its own period of existence, fewRomantics would have agreed on a general meaning.

Romanticism appeared in conflict with the Enlightenment. It reflected a

crisis in Enlightenment thought itself, a crisis which shook the

comfortable 18th centuryphilosophe out of his intellectual single-

mindedness.

The Romantics were conscious of their unique destiny. In fact, it was

self-consciousness which appears as one of the keys elements of

Romanticism itself.

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Romanticism (con) One of the fundamentals of Romanticism is the belief in the natural

goodness of man, the idea that man in a state of nature would behavewell but is hindered by civilization (Rousseau -- "man is born free and

everywhere he is in chains").

The "savage" is noble, childhood is good and the emotions inspired byboth beliefs causes the heart to soar. On the contrary, urban life andthe commitment to "getting and spending," generates a fear anddistrust of the world.

If man is inherently sinful, reason must restrain his passions, but if he isnaturally good, then in an appropriate environment, his emotions canbe trusted (Blake -- "bathe in the waters of life").

The idea of man's natural goodness and the stress on emotion also

contributed

the belief that what is special in a man is to be valued over what isrepresentative (the latter oftentimes connected with the conventionsimposed on man by "civilized society."

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Romanticism the Romantics yearned to reclaim human freedom. Habits, values,

rules and standards imposed by a civilization grounded in reason and

reason only had to be abandoned.

Whereas thephilosophes saw man in common, that is, as creatures

endowed with Reason, the Romantics saw diversity and uniqueness.

That is, those traits which set one man apart from another, and traits

which set one nation apart from another

Impt to remember that the Industrial Revolution was in full swing, thus

adding entirely new social concerns. The old order -- politics and the

economy -- seemed to be falling apart and for many Romantics, this

raised the threat of moral disaster as well.

Men and women faced the need to build new systems of discipline and

order, or, at the very least, they had to reshape older systems.

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References Andrew Hadfield, Dominic Rainsford, and Tim Woods. (Houndmills: Macmillan, 1998), 262-

74.

Berlanstein, Leonard R. The Industrial Revolution and Work in 19th Century Europe. NewYork, 1992.

Briggs, Asa. The Age of Improvement, 1783-1867. New York, 1959.

Caldwell, Janis McLarren. "Sympathy and Science in Frankenstein." In The Ethics inLiterature, eds.

Dale, Henry. The Industrial Revolution. New York, 1992.

Hughes, Kristin. Everyday Life inRegency and Victorian England, 1998.

Mellor, Anne K. "Possessing nature: the female in Frankenstein.Romanticism andFeminism, ed. Anne K. Mellor. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988

Prickett, Stephen, ed. The Romantics: Context of English Literature. Holmes & Meier Pub1981.

Rauch, Alan. The Monstrous Body of Knowledge in Mary Shelleys Frankenstein. Studiesin Romantic Literature, 34:3 (Summer 1995): 227-53.

Stearns, Peter N. Interpreting the Industrial Revolution. Washington, 1991.

Swisher, Clarice. Victorian England, Turning Points in History. Greenhaven Press, 2000

19 th century chronology

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