Key Contextual Points Flashcards
(89 cards)
1
Q
The Restoration
A
1660 - Charles II
2
Q
The Glorious Revolution
A
1688 - James II (Charles II’s successor) was deposed and fled to France
1689 - Mary (James II’s Protestant daughter) and William of Orange (her Dutch husband) became joint British monarchs
3
Q
The Great Plague
A
1665 - kills around 100,000 people
4
Q
The Great Fire of London
A
1666 - destroys around 13,000 homes
5
Q
Act of Settlement
A
1701 - only a Protestant could ascend the throne
6
Q
Bank of England founded
A
1694
7
Q
Bursting of the South Sea Bubble
A
1720 - first great financial collapse in modern history
8
Q
Battle of Plassey
A
1757 - British forced the French out of India and began genuine expansion of control under East India Company
9
Q
American War of Independence
A
1775-1783
10
Q
George III suffered his first attack of mental illness
A
1788
11
Q
First steam-driven cotton factory opened (in Manchester)
A
1789
12
Q
The Times began
A
1788
13
Q
Rise of Grub Street
A
1750s
14
Q
First English Copyright Act
A
1709-10
15
Q
Scriblerus Club founded
A
1713
Included Pope, Swift, Gay, John Arbuthnot and Viscount Bolingbroke
16
Q
Beginning of the French Revolution
A
1789
17
Q
King Louis XVI executed
A
1793
18
Q
Napoleon crowns himself Emperor
A
1804
19
Q
Battle of Waterloo (ends Napoleon once and for all!)
A
1815
20
Q
French Revolutionary Wars
A
1792-1802
21
Q
Napoleonic Wars
A
1802-1815
22
Q
Speenhamland System
A
1795 - means-tested sliding-scale of wage supplements in order to mitigate the worst effects of rural poverty
23
Q
Qheat prices rose to their highest point in the 1800s in…
A
1812
24
Q
Introduction of Income Tax
A
1799
25
Act of Union of Britain and Ireland
1800
26
Combination Acts
1799 and 1800 Combination Acts essentially banned trade unions (repealed in 1824 but then reinstated in 1825 due to the explosion of strikes that followed)
27
Luddite movement
1811-12
28
Peterloo Massacre
1819
| 18 killed and hundreds injured
29
What did the 1830 General Election demonstrate?
Proved the general desire for reform with the election of the Whigs (more liberal) after a long period of Tory dominance
30
Six Acts or Gag Laws
1819 - attempted to prevent meetings for the purpose of discussing reform
31
Abolishment of slavery in the British Empire
1833
32
Factory Acts
1819 and 1825, introduced regulations on use of child labour
33
Professional police force established
1820s under Robert Peel
34
Two acts which relaxed religious tensions
1828, Repeal of Test and Corporation Acts, which liberated Non-Conformists
1829, Roman Catholic Relief Act made discrimination against Roman Catholics illegal
35
First steam passenger line opened
1825
36
Liverpool-Manchester railway opened
1830
37
Blackwood's Magazine
1817, part of an explosion of literary periodicals
38
Thomas Carlyle on the Ancients vs Moderns debate
1827, he wrote about the ‘grand controversy […] between the Classicists and Romanticists’
39
Preface to Lyrical Ballads quotation on language
‘the real language of men in a state of vivid sensation’
40
First Reform Act
1832, enfranchised about one in five adult males (but it did not change the property qualifications and thus most of the population remained disenfranchised)
41
Poor Law Amendment Act
1834 – Poor Law Amendment Act, replaced the Speenhamland System with workhouses for the poor, segregated by gender
42
Repeal of the Corn Laws
1846 – changed from the protectionist/mercantilist system to a free trade model
43
Glasgow cotton spinners went on a three-month strike in...
1837
44
Canada was awarded internal self-government
1848
45
Thomas Cook opened his travel agency
Early 1840s
46
Theatre Regulations Act
1843, abolished the monopoly of Convent Garden and Drury Lane, allowing for more diverse forms of theatre to develop
47
‘Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood’ of poets and painters founded
1848
48
Stamp duty on newspapers was reduced to one penny making them available to far wider audience
1840s
49
Dates of Chartist petitions
1839, 1841, 1848
50
Number of signatures on the first Chartist petition
1.25 million
51
Tamworth Manifesto
1834 - Robert Peel's speech laid the foundations for the Conservative Party
52
Second Reform Act
1867, more than doubled the franchise (first time any working-class men could vote)
53
Trade Union Act
1871 - first time trade unions were legalised
54
First Married Women's Property Act
1870
55
Elementary Education Act
1870 - free public education available to all 5-13-year-olds (this was made compulsory in 1876)
56
Irish Republican Brotherhood
Founded 1857-58 - aimed to overthrow the British government in Ireland
57
American Civil War
1861-65
58
Indian Mutiny
1857
59
Victoria's Little Wars
Series of colonial wars in South Africa in 1870s
60
Opening of the Suez Canal
1869
61
Great Exhibition
1851
62
First underground railway line
1863
63
The Origin of the Species
1859
64
The Oxford Movement
Movement amongst members of the High Anglican Church which advocated more ritualistic worship (many eventually just became Roman Catholics)
65
German High Criticism
Religious criticism which called the historical nature of the biblical Gospels into question (epitomised by David Friedrich Strass’ Das Leben Jesu which was translated by George Eliot!)
66
Rapid development of the print industry and mass readership for newspapers due to...
1855, abolition of Stamp Duty on newspapers
| 1861, removal of duty on paper
67
Founding of Clarendon Press
1672
68
Key characteristics of Charles II's rule
1660-1685
- Religious strife
- Exclusion Crisis (attempts by Parliament to prevent succession of James II)
- For the last four years of his reign, Charles ruled without Parliament
69
Test Act
1673 - Parliament prevented Roman Catholics from holding civil or military office
70
Key characteristics of James II's rule
1685-1688
- Attempted to return Britain to Catholicism
- Used the royal prerogative to overrule Parliament
71
Who were the Jacobites?
Supporters of the Stuart line of succession i.e. wanted James II and his children to ascend the British throne
72
East India Company founded Calcutta
1690
73
Whigs in power
1714-1784
Regained power in 1830
Merged with the new Liberal Party in 1860s
74
Tories in power
1784-1830
| 1830s, became the Conservative Party under Sir Robert Peel
75
Key characteristics of George I's rule
1714-1727
- Came from Hanover (Germany) and never bothered to learn English
- 1715, Jacobite uprising in opposition to him
- Attended few Cabinet meetings, leaving the Whigs under Robert Walpole to govern the country
76
Key characteristics of George II's rule
1727-1760
- Continued Whig control of government
- Series of wars: with Spain, Seven Years War, War of Austrian Succession
77
Key characteristics of George III's rule
1760-1820
- Broke Whig power by appointing loyal ministers and essentially governing himself for 20 years
- Loss of American colonies
- Mental illness
- 1784, large Tory majority in General Election
78
Smallpox inoculation introduced to England by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
1717 (in general use by 1740)
79
Carron Iron Works established
1759
80
Examples of mid-1700s periodicals
Daniel Defoe’s Review
Richard Steele’s The Tatler
Joseph Addison’s The Spectator
81
Which classical author did Pope translate?
Homer
82
Which classical authors did Dryden translate?
Virgil and Juvenal
83
Examples of texts written about the French Revolution (3)
Edmund Burke's Reflections
Thomas Paine's The Rights of Man (1791-92)
Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792)
84
Key characteristics of George IV's Regency and Reign
Regency: 1811-1820
Reign: 1820-1830
- Patron of the arts, giving a large collection of books and artwork to the nation
- Associated with witty and civilised culture
- Personal extravagance caused the monarchy to lose power and prestige
85
Key characteristics of William IV's reign
1830-37
- Governed through Tories
- Obstructed the first Reform Bill but eventually helped the Whigs force the third Bill through
86
Key characteristics Victoria's reign
1837-1901
- Raised the reputation of the monarchy
- Connected strongly with the Empire as a kind of imperial mother figure
- Pax Britannica - no major international conflicts
87
First Public Health Act passed
1848
88
Key American Romantic writers
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Allen Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry W. Longfellow and Henry Thoreau (!!)
89
Charles Lyall’s Principles of Geology first published
1830-33
