Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Throughout most of the 19th century Britain was the most powerful country in the world. [16] The period from 1815 to 1914, known as the Pax Britannica, was a time of relatively peaceful relations between the world's great powers. This is particularly true of Britain's interactions with the others. [17]
Literacy rates were generally higher in Scotland throughout much of the 19th century but the gap between the nations of Great Britain had closed by the century's end. By 1900, only around 3% of people in England and Wales were illiterate with a similar rate in Scotland.
The 19th century also saw the rapid creation, development, and codification of many sports, particularly in Britain and the United States. Association football , rugby union , baseball , and many other sports were developed during the 19th century, while the British Empire facilitated the rapid spread of sports such as cricket to many different ...
In the 19th century, the right to sit in the House was held by 400 secular peers of England, [18] lords spiritual (28 bishops and Anglican archbishops), 16 Scottish peers (since 1707), and 28 Irish peers (since 1801), [18] including five representatives of the royal family, the Dukes of Wales, Edinburgh, Gloucester, York, and Kent. Members of ...
The second half of the 19th century saw a major expansion of Britain's colonial empire in Asia and Africa as well as the Pacific. In the "Scramble for Africa", the boast was having the Union Jack flying from "Cairo to Cape Town." Britain defended its empire with the world's dominant navy, and a small professional army.
The growth of British imperial strength was further underpinned by the steamship and the telegraph, new technologies invented in the second half of the 19th century, allowing it to control and defend the empire. By 1902, the British Empire was linked together by a network of telegraph cables, the so-called All Red Line. [20]
A prolonged agricultural depression in Britain at the end of the 19th century, together with the introduction in the 20th century of increasingly heavy levels of taxation on inherited wealth, put an end to agricultural land as the primary source of wealth for the upper classes.
Factors that historians note spurred innovation and discovery include the 17th century Scientific Revolution and the 18th/19th century Industrial Revolution. [1] [2] Another possible influence is the British patent system which had medieval origins and was codified with the Patent Act of 1852. [3]