BOOK REVIEW: ‘Victorious Century’ by David Cannadine

OPINION:

VICTORIOUS CENTURY: THE UNITED KINGDOM, 1800-1906

By David Cannadine

Viking, $40, 530 pages

Anyone who undertakes a general history of 19th-century Britain must marshal enormous amounts of information. In “Victorious Century,” author David Cannadine certainly succeeds in this task.

When the century began, Britain was still fighting Napoleon and fearful that his all-conquering armies would make their way onto England’s shores. While the navy defeated his ships relatively quickly, it took 15 years for the armies of Britain and her allies to win at Waterloo.

Already, the late-18th century, the Western Hemisphere’s first industrial revolution had gotten underway in England’s North and Midlands, and it proceeded apace throughout the 1800s, fueling both extraordinary increases in population and great wealth and also in extreme immiseration and poverty.

All this time the British Empire was growing into the largest the world had known. Quite a lot of this growth came from ad hoc annexations by colonial officials rather than from settled British policy. The empire brought its own pressures. Some of these were settled by peaceful devolutions of power as in the establishment of Canada then Australia and New Zealand as self-governing countries.

Other issues led to draining and often ignominious wars, such as the opium wars against China, the Crimean war against Russia, and prolonged and bitter battles with Ireland and India about self-determination.

Indeed, problems and issues, both major and minor, abounded, and David Cannadine’s clear and orderly presentation shows readers how Conservative and Liberal politicians worked through them.

Often prompted by middle- and working-class reformers, by the end of the century they had established less onerous factory conditions, especially for women and children, introduced a nation-wide system of education, abandoned the protection of corn and other foodstuffs so even the poorest could eat, made it possible for people other than Anglicans to serve in parliament, and enormously widened the franchise — though not enough to include women.

In explaining the issues involved in these and other reforms, Mr. Cannadine often shows how the personalities of politicians such as the Duke of Wellington, Sir Robert Peel, William Gladstone, Benjamin Disraeli and Lord Palmerston — who was in office almost continuously from 1809 to 1865 — shaped policy and events.

Notably, he writes much less about working class or radical campaigners such as the Chartists, trades unionists, and suffragettes, than he does about the mostly aristocratic politicians who, decade after decade, hogged ministerial positions.

Indeed, he seems most engaged when discussing 19th-century politics, particularly Britain’s relationship with its overseas territories, including Ireland. He tends to present social issues in terms of statistics about such things as living conditions and life expectations, who worked in what industries, and the quantitative effects of their efforts.

His illuminating exposition of the 1851 census is illustrative. It showed that while cities such as London and Manchester were huge, most people still lived in smaller towns and cities. More people worked in agriculture than in industry, and most industrial workers labored in small or medium workshops rather than giant factories.

He frequently points out the contrasts — ironic were they not so painful — between Britain’s technological advances and consequent wealth on the one hand, and its poverty and backwardness on the other. “The United Kingdom might be the most advanced and modern nations on the globe,” he notes in his discussion of the 1851 census, “but it was also a nation where the majority of the population were not only under-employed, under-nourished and largely indifferent to religion, but under-schooled as well.”

Mr. Cannadine writes fluently, sometimes entertainingly, and without academic pomposity. This means the 530 densely packed pages of “Victorious Century” can be read relatively quickly, though ideally readers should have some knowledge of the major events and issues of 19th-century Britain as back-stories are rarely included.

In particular, it would be useful to understand the history of Ireland and the English and Scottish involvement in the country because the Irish question occupied so much attention, especially during the famine of the 1840s, and then during the campaigns for Home Rule and against the policy of coercion in the late 19th century.

“Victorious Century” does not suggest new historical interpretations of 19th-century Britain. Its interest lies rather in the author’s wide range and his emphasis on contrasts — an emphasis announced at the outset by his epigraph from Dickens: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

Readers following the progress of Brexit will note much of interest, not least Britain’s old-established resistance to involvement in European issues, the Irish status quo that is now complicating negotiations about customs duties, and the rifts in the Conservative Party caused by differences over protectionism that are once again surfacing in the debates between a “hard” and “soft” Brexit.

• Claire Hopley is a writer and editor in Amherst, Mass.