Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
CHAPTER 15 - Victorian Prosperity and depression - Coggle Diagram
CHAPTER 15 - Victorian Prosperity and depression
Britain’s industrial prosperity in the mid-19th century
6Mions visitors at the Great Exhibition 1851 Crystal Palace => showed British domibation in industry (steam machines, railway engines were displayed) => "workship of the world"
Exports btw 1850s-70s skyrocketed + wages in industry :arrow_upper_right: of 50% = WHY ?
2) New inventions => H. Bessemer's converter system (allowed to produce cheaper steel in large qt)
3) Gladstone (Chancellor of the Exchequer 50-60s) removed remaining tariffs: cheap raw materials from colonies => chep manufactured products were exported
1) first nation to industrialize => no competition (USA/Germany were clients)
4) Spread of railway (high investment) => new jobs, good for trade (fresh products)
What about the depression?
1875-1900 = "Great depression" BUT no serious industrial slump, only g slow-down, :arrow_lower_right: prices and profits => unemployement (
The Myth of the Great Depression (1985), S.B. Saul.)
Causes
:arrow_lower_right: in railway building BC => :arrow_lower_right: demand for metal + Germany/US competition + obsolescence
Histo E. Hobsbawn => aristocracy preferred to invest profits into lands rather than in modern innovation (no modernization!)
families ruled firms //German and American leaders =chosen over their skills.
Trade Unions were a counter power of progress (Luddites)
science was not taught well at school
laissez-faire prevented the state from protecting the national industry -> hard competition
CQ: there were already weaknesses before 1914, end of the British pre-dominance.
Agriculture
1853 => 1873 "Golden age" of farming => new methods (science) + growing pop => :arrow_upper_right: demand => :arrow_upper_right: prices and profits + railways // inexistence of refrigeration avoided ++foreign competition
Repeal of the Corn Laws (46) => pamphet
High Farming
by farmer James Caird in 1849 => need to modernize agri in order to lower prices and maintain profits
Consequences
Peasants turned their lands into pasture, poultry, livestock or dairy.
Political => farmers: bankrupcy and poverty => lanowners lost power => middle-class people elected to HoC => dismantling of the old po order without revolution (E.J. Evans)
Social => unemployed peasants => hardships // factory men had better condition => :arrow_lower_right: prices but :arrow_upper_right: purchasing power => dev of leisure (soccer)
Depression after 1873 => bad weather, Trans-continental allowed to import foreign food, gov didn't help !