Industrial Britain 1745–1901, Year 11: the American Revolution, the Great Reform Act and Chartism (Power and the people option)

The Seven Years' War

提示Known in North America as the French and Indian War.

为什么Duties were enforced more strictly after the war, and then the Stamp Act of 1765 imposed a direct tax on colonists. Both increased what the colonists had to pay.

No taxation without representation

提示A slogan.

为什么Parliament replied that the colonists were virtually represented, like the many Englishmen who owned no property and could not vote.

The East India Company's

提示Parliament had given a trading firm special rights over selling tea in America.

为什么The Tea Act let the company sell tea directly in the colonies, and colonists objected to the taxes and to the company's special position together. The protest is remembered as the Boston Tea Party.

With the Intolerable Acts, which included closing the port of Boston

提示Parliament punished one colony in particular.

为什么The laws aimed to place Massachusetts under tighter British control. In response, colonial delegates met at the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia in September 1774.

Consent

提示What a government needs from the people it governs.

为什么The Declaration lists many complaints against the king and Parliament. This one echoes the long-running argument that Parliament should not tax people who were not represented in it.

The Treaty of Paris

提示It was signed in the capital of one of Britain's rivals.

为什么It ended the war that began in 1775. For Britain it meant giving up the thirteen colonies it had ruled in America.

It was a bitter joke echoing the Battle of Waterloo, because soldiers attacked an unarmed crowd at St Peter's Field.

提示Think of a famous victory over Napoleon, four years earlier.

为什么About 60,000 people had gathered peacefully to hear Henry Hunt speak for parliamentary reform. Yeomanry and cavalry were sent in, and an estimated 18 people were killed and up to 700 injured.

Six Acts

提示A set of laws, named after how many there were.

为什么They followed Peterloo. They made large public meetings harder, taxed cheap periodicals and let magistrates search for weapons. Many people saw them as a symbol of repression, and the vote was not widened until 1832.

Rotten borough

提示The name suggests something decayed.

为什么Old Sarum was the best-known example. Meanwhile, growing industrial towns such as Birmingham had no MPs of their own. The 1832 Act removed dozens of rotten and pocket boroughs and gave seats to new towns.

The king agreed to create enough new Whig peers to outvote them.

提示The threat was to change who sat in the upper house.

为什么The Lords had defeated an earlier bill in 1831, and there were riots in several towns, the worst in Bristol. William IV was reluctant, but agreed to the new peers, and the Tory peers then gave way.

10

提示Think of a two-digit sum, not a three-digit one.

为什么The test meant the Act mainly gave the vote to the property-owning middle classes. Many working men were disappointed to be left out, and women were formally excluded.

1839; 1842; 1848

提示They were spread over just under ten years.

为什么The 1842 petition was the biggest, with over three million signatures. Parliament would not act on any of them, but within decades several Chartist demands did become law.

The Great Reform Act gave the vote to property owners, so working men were still left without it.

提示Think about who qualified in 1832, and who did not.

为什么Chartism began in the mid-1830s as Britain's first mass working-class political movement. Its support peaked in years of depression and hunger, in 1839, 1842 and 1848.

Payment for MPs

提示Without it, only the wealthy could take the job.

为什么The other five points were a vote for every man over 21, a secret ballot, no property qualification for MPs, equal-sized constituencies, and annual parliaments.

Newport

提示It is in south-east Wales, in what was then Monmouthshire.

为什么Several thousand marchers led by John Frost, a former mayor of the town, gathered outside the Westgate Hotel, where soldiers opened fire. The rising was quickly crushed and was a disaster for the Chartist cause.

Kennington Common, London

提示A public open space within the capital.

为什么The authorities prepared heavily and recruited special constables in large numbers. The meeting was seen as a failure, the petition was rejected again, and Chartism declined rapidly as an organised movement after 1848.