This new form of city was characterized primarily by a very
large population spread over a very large area; by 1900 Greater
London had a population of over six million inhabitants spread
over more than a hundred square miles. This spread of the city
had been made possible by the mechanization of transport. The
construction of the railroads from the 1830s mad e possible the
middle-class commuter and the development of suburbia.
The dispersion of the poorer classes was made feasible first by
the underground railroad in 1865, and then in the 1880s by the
laying down of rails in the streets themselves for horse drawn
trams and later for electrically powered cars.
Secondly, the world city's population was drawn from the whole
world. London's population was constantly augmented by the influx
of great numbers of migrants, from within Britain and abroad.
The railroads brought into London the dispossessed and the ambitious
of the countryside and the northern cities, as well as the poor
and politically oppressed from the South and East of Europe; the
steamship brought migrants from the empire, Indians and Chinese
above all.
Thirdly, the world had direct industrial and commercial ties to
the rest of the planet. The steamships brought into the Port of
London eight million tons of goods in 1880, compared with only
800,000 at the beginning of the century; and Baedeker was sending
visitors to see the warehouses that could store 200,000 tons of
foods. "Nothing will convey to the stranger a better idea
of the vast activity and stupendous wealth of London," he
wrote, "than a visit to the warehouses, filled to overflowing
with interminable stores of every kind of foreign and colonial
products."
Fourthly, the world city was deeply involved in the internal affairs
of the other nations of the world. For Victorian London, this
involved a dual responsibility. It was the administrator of a
growing colonial empire and the undisputed leader of a group of
self-governing dominions; and as its industrial supremacy and
its naval might made it, at least until about 1870, the major
power in the world, it was a necessary participants in all important
world affairs. Indeed at times its attitude seemed well summed
up by the popular music hall song:
We don't want to fight
But by Jingo, if we do
We've got the men, we've got the ships,
We've got the money too.
The change in London in the nineteenth century was due to the
conversion of an industrial, commercial and administrative capital
to a new world role; and its physical adaptation was made possible
by the application of a new technology to the needs of urban life.
The years between the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815
and the continent wide revolutions in 1848 had not been years
of social peace in Britain. The predominant mood had been a state
of disquiet for the future of British society, due to either a
distrust of British institutions or fear for their survival. It
is true that the industrial revolution was continuing unabated,
passing from a transformation of textile production to an industrialism
of railroads, coal, and iron. industrial production rose at an
average of thirty-seven percent each decade. Yet the working classes
were continuously discontented and intermittently riotous.
In the 1830s and 1840s, bad harvest combined with the tariff on
imported wheat to keep food prices high; downturns in the business
cycle, uncontrolled by government action, produced severe unemployment;
and there was even a fall in the real wages of those who had jobs.
The reform measures that were finally passed in the 1840s, such
as the Factory Acts and the repeal of the Corn Laws, were little
more than palliatives. Only higher wages and more secure employment
could end working-class misery.
Discontent with the country's political institutions had been
focused on the method of electing the House of Commons. The Reform
Bill of 1832 had at last spread representation to the industrial
cities, and had given the wealthier middle classes suffrage. But
only one man in five had the vote; and no women had the privilege.
The general discontent with the nature of parliamentary representation
and even, in the early part of the century, extended to include
the monarchy itself.
George III had been totally insane in the last years of his reign.
His son George IV (reigned 1820-1830) was, in the words of The
Spectator, "a weak, ignorant, commonplace sort of person."
Little more was expected of Victoria when she ascended the throne
at the age of eighteen, unprepared by education or background
for her new responsibilities. The people of London, as The Times
commented, "saw the monarchy in Queen Victoria, and pledged
themselves that for their own sakes they would uphold it, with
the help of their Sovereign, so - if not, they would preserve
the monarchy, in spite of an ill-advised monarch."
As for the empire, which was to become the chief source of national
pride by the end of Victoria's reign, only the working classes
showed any interest. In the 1830s, over 100,000 persons emigrated
annually; in the 1840s, over 200,000. Their destinations were
Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and also the United
States. The government fought small wars, like the Opium War in
China, to increase trade facilities, and permitted both governmental
and private agencies to expand their territorial hold in India
and south Africa. But for the general public the disillusionment
that had followed the loss of the American colonies persisted.
By 1851, the discontent with industrialism and with the country's
political institutions had been alleviated, and the first glimmerings
of interest in empire were being roused by the activities of antislavery
groups and explorers. From 1848 to the crash of 1873, the mid-Victorian
age knew steady and real prosperity. Its basis was the expansion
of the heavy industries linked to coal, iron, and steel, especially
for the building of railroads, steamships, and other forms of
heavy engineering. The beginning of industrialism on the continent
made the developing countries there major importers of British
coal, iron and steel, and heavy engineering products until they
themselves, from the 1870s, could challenge Britain's position
as the workshop of the world.
Capital accumulated in the earlier phases of the industrial revolution
now sought new openings for profitable investment in new forms
of industry and in overseas investment. Britain became the world's
banker as well as its manufacturer. Even the farmers found that
they could profit from the growing home market by capital investment
in land or mechanical improvements, and ceased to regret the repeal
of the Corn Laws. Free trade was welcomed as the common philosophy
of both industrial and agricultural classes, and a climate of
opinion thus came to exist that was favorable to the capitalist
expansion.
Even working-class wages rose faster than the rising prices that
were themselves acting as an inflationary stimulus to the economy.
Money wages probably rose fifty-six percent between 1850 and 1874.
Taken in relation to the rise in prices, the average working-class
family probably received about ten percent more in real wages.
The rise was sufficient to blunt the discontent of the poorer
people.
One important factor strengthening faith in Britain's political
institutions was the sense of relief at having avoided the upheavals
that rocked the continental capitals in 1848. British governments,
even if elected by a minority of the country's population, had
answered demands for reform with bills ranging from the abolition
of slavery in the British empire (1833) to the institution of
a ten-and-a-half-hour working day in the factories (1847). Moreover
the predominant liberal ethic was against the increase in state
controls, and hence minimized the significance of widespread political
participation. London itself lacked an effective local government,
and even an adequate water supply and sanitary system, and efforts
to provide them received little public support. "We prefer
to take our chance of cholera and the rest," wrote The Times,
"than be bullied into health." Even minor attempts at
parliamentary reform in the 1850s died for lack of interest.
To this renewed acceptance of the validity of Britain's political
institutions, Victoria herself had contributed substantially.
From the moment of her accession, Victoria showed the qualities
that were to remain with her throughout her reign: a sense of
duty, a conviction of moral righteousness, and a deep feeling
for her country. "since it has pleased Providence to place
me in this station," she wrote in her diary, "I shall
do my utmost to fulfill my duty towards my country; I am very
young, and perhaps in many, though not in all things, inexperienced,
but I am sure, that very few have more good will and more real
desire to do what is fit and right than I have."
Her marriage in 1840 to the earnest young German prince, Albert
of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, helped her find her political role. Albert
was well-educated and intelligent. He had grasped the significance
of the monarchy's new functions, which combined a small amount
of political manipulation with an unlimited responsibility as
the emotional and ceremonial focus of a people in social turmoil.
It was Albert whose growing domination over his wife forced Victoria
to take an interest in matters that had previously bored her,
such as science and literature and even industrial progress. As
Victoria accepted the necessary transition of power to men with
whom she had little personal sympathy, she pursued family interests
with her nine children, visits to the seaside and the country
with the family, and admiration of Albert's plunge into the world
of British industry.
In 1849, Albert hit upon the idea of the Great Exhibition,
"to give us a true test and a living picture of the point
of development at which the whole of mankind has arrived in this
great task of applied science and a new starting point from which
all nations, will be able to direct their further exertions."
The prince's idea was approved by the Royal Society, and won the
financial backing of industry and the general public, who subscribed
£200,000 as guarantee. A Royal commission of architects
and engineers was appointed to plan the building and exhibits.
Out of 234 plans submitted, the commission, urged by the prince,
eventually picked the most original design of all, a massive greenhouse
designed by the head gardener of a northern duke. Joseph Paxton,
however, was no mere gardener, but an engineer, railroad director,
newspaper promoter, and imaginative architect in glass and iron.
He offered a building 1,848 feet long, 308 feet broad, and 66
feet high, tall enough to cover the old elm trees already occupying
the chosen site in Hyde Park. It was composed of mass-produced
and standardized parts, including over 6,000 15-foot columns and
over one million square feet of glass. It could be erected in
seventeen weeks; and it could be, and was, dismantled and re-erected
in another part of London when the exhibition was over. In spite
of many fears expressed over the building's durability, it survived
until 1936.
The completed building found few detractors. All of the thirteen
thousand exhibitors had ample space; and so did six million visitors
from all over the world, who gazed in fascination, as described
by Lord Tennyson, on
... the giant aisles
Rich in model and design;
Harvest-toll and husbandry,
Loom and wheel and enginery,
Secrets of the sullen mine,
Steel and gold, and coal and wine,
Fabric rough or fairy-fine...
And shapes and hues of Art divine!
All of beauty, all of use,
That one fair planet can produce.