History of British society
Encyclopedia
The social history of England evidences many social changes over the centuries. These major social changes have affected England
both internally and in its relationship with other nations. The themes of social history
include demographic history
, labour history and the working class
, women's history
, family history, the history of education in England
, urban history
and rural and agricultural history
. The topic generally excludes politics, diplomacy and intellectual and constitutional studies.
, the switch from the hunter-gatherer
lifestyle to farming around 4000 BC must have heralded an enormous shift in all aspects of human life. Nobody knows what changes may have occurred, and recent evidence of permanent buildings and habitation from 3,000 years ago means that these may still have been gradual shifts. One of the most obvious symbols of change in prehistoric society is Stonehenge
. The building of such stone circle
s, burial mounds and monument
s throughout the British Isles
seems to have required a division of labour
. Builders would have needed to dedicate themselves to the task of monument construction to acquire the required skills. Not having time to hunt and farm would make them rely on others to such an extent that specialised farmers would emerge who provided not only for themselves but also for the monument builders.
What we know of prehistoric times apart from their monuments is mostly derived from the remains of burials, and this shows another major change in society: the rise of an aristocracy
. It is perhaps inevitable that a division of labour would give some people less work while others got more, and the increase of lavishly furnished grave
s seems to confirm this. Again, care should be taken not to infer too many complex ideas of social history from grave sites. However, graves do show that people had surplus time for the production of decorative items and they hint at early beliefs about death and religion. This aristocracy, whether it gained its position through martial strength or technological skill, made further social stratification highly likely.
Two other changes which surely influenced social change were the beginning of the Iron Age
and the building of hill fort
s. The first probably necessitated the second, although the need for forts was probably greater due to the growth in population, competition for resources and an unwillingness to simply move on and abandon settled lives or farms.
Fortification and war raise one important unanswered question about British society: the role of invasion. Any incursion of other peoples into the British Isles is bound to have major social effects, nevertheless we do not really know whether these events were invasions, immigrations or simply adoptions of outside ideas; and the native populations may have been mostly killed, slowly supplanted, integrated with the new or just had the aristocracy replaced. These questions relate to many of the changes in culture seen in prehistoric and later times such as the Beaker people, the Celt
s, the Romans
and the Anglo-Saxons
.
probably did not alter society greatly at first, as it was simply a replacement of the ruling class, but numerous, at first minor, ideas would later gain footholds. Certainly, it wouldn't have affected Ireland
in the slightest. It is from the Romans, and particularly Tacitus
, that we get the earliest detailed written records of Britain and its tribal society. We get fascinating glimpses of society in Britain before the Romans, although only briefly and disparagingly mentioned, particularly the importance of powerful women such as Cartimandua
and Boudica
. City dwelling was not new to pre-Roman Britain, but it was a lifestyle that the Romans preferred even though available to only a select few Romanised Britons. Romanisation was an important part of the Roman conquest strategy, and British rulers who willingly adopted Roman ways were rewarded as client kings; a good example of this is Togidubnus and his ultramodern Roman-style house at Fishbourne
.
Although the Roman conquest was relatively swift, there was often rebellion, and war with the unconquered Caledonia
n tribes in the far north, and so the army became an important part of Roman British life. An army, probably larger than that of most medieval monarchs, gave a low-status Briton the chance of a steady job, the possibility of seeing the rest of the empire, and rewards for service if they survived. The army also brought people to Britain, not just from present day Italy
but from all over the empire. To subdue and control the country, the Romans built a major road network which not only was an important civil engineering
project but formed the basis of the country's communication links. The Romans brought many other innovations and ideas such as writing and plumbing, but how many of these things were the preserve of the rich or were even lost and re-appropriated at a later date is uncertain. The one other great social change the Romans brought to Britain was Christianity
, whose effect on society was probably minimal at first but eventually far succeeded.
in the 5th century is thought to have brought general strife and anarchy to society, but the actual events are not well understood. Archaeology
certainly shows a reduction in the expensive goods found before and the Roman cities began to be abandoned, but much of British society had never had such things. Certainly, numerous peoples took advantage of the absence of Roman power, but how they affected British society is far from clear. The hegemony of Roman rule gave way to a selection of splintered, often competing, societies, including later the heptarchy
. Rather than think of themselves as a small part of a larger Roman empire, they reverted to smaller tribal allegiances.
The Anglo-Saxons
' arrival is the most hotly disputed of events, and the extent to which they killed, displaced, or integrated with the existing society is still questioned. What is clear is that a separate Anglo-Saxon society, which would eventually become England
with a more Germanic
feel, was set up in the south east of the island. These new arrivals had not been conquered by the Romans but their society was perhaps similar to that of Britain. The main difference was their pagan
religion, which the surviving northern areas of non-Saxon rule sought to convert to Christianity. During the 7th century these northern areas, particularly Northumbria
, became important sites of learning, with monasteries acting like early universities and figures such as Bede
at the forefront of Europe
an thought. In the 9th century Alfred the Great
was extremely interested in creating a literate, educated people and did much to promote the English language
, even writing books himself. Alfred and his successors unified and brought stability to most of the south of Britain that would eventually become England, and he is also credited with organising the country into shire
s, the forerunners of current counties
.
, although always a very contentious idea, is often used to describe medieval society. Basically stated, a lord
owns land or a fief which he allows vassal
s to work in return for their military service. The vast majority of the people were peasant
s who would work on the vassal's fiefs. This or a similar system was the basis of later medieval society. It probably existed in some form in England before the Norman conquest, but the Normans
did much to institute it, either replacing existing lords or by becoming 'overlords' above now-demoted lords. A wealth of information on these social structures can be drawn from one of the best early surveys of its type, the Domesday Book
.
After the Norman conquest of England, English society seemed fixed and unchanging for several centuries, but gradual and significant changes were still taking place, the exact nature of which would not be appreciated until much later. The Norman lords spoke Norman
, and in order to work for them or gain advantage, the English had to use the Anglo-Norman language
that developed in England. This became a necessary administrative and literary language
(see Anglo-Norman literature
), but despite this the English language
was not supplanted, and after gaining much in grammar and vocabulary began in turn to replace the language of the rulers. At the same time the population of England more than doubled between Domesday and the end of the 13th century, and this growth was not checked by the almost continual foreign warfare, crusades and occasional civil anarchy.
The crusades are one measure of the ever-increasing power of the church in medieval life, with some estimates suggesting that as many as 40,000 clergy
were ordained during the 13th century. This is also shown by the spate of cathedral
building, common throughout Europe, at the time. These great buildings would often take several generations to complete, spawning whole communities of artisan
s and craftsmen and offering them jobs for life.
The increase in population led not only to larger cities and towns, but also to the building of many more towns. This did not change England significantly from being a mainly rural society, and many agricultural changes, such as crop rotation
, kept the countryside profitable. It has been suggested that the 13th century experienced a mini-industrial revolution, with the increased use of wind power and changes in the wool
industry. Wool, always important to the British economy, was traditionally exported to be processed, but it was now frequently processed in England, creating a variety of extra jobs. The export of cloth continued to increase from the 14th century onwards, and after the closing of the port of Calais
(which consumed much of the raw wool) by the Spanish
in the late 16th century, cloth became the primary type of wool exported. Many people were finding different roles and responsibilities within English society too, with the growth of common law
giving people greater access to the law and the "commons" starting to have a place in the Parliament of England
during Edward I of England
's time.
After many years of growth and gradual change, there was one seismic event which changed British society dramatically. The Black Death
in the middle of the 14th century, according to some estimates, almost halved the population. Whole villages were wiped out by the plague, but rather than destroying society it managed to reinvigorate it. Before the plague there was a large, perhaps excessive, workforce with overpopulation and people competing for scarce resources. The drop in population meant that labourers were in short supply, and peasants who had once been confined to a landowner's estate now had great incentive to travel to areas without workers. This social mobility was combined with the fact that peasants could charge much more for their services, and this began a switch from indentured labourer to wage earner which signalled the decline of the feudal system.
The peasants' new-found freedoms were very worrying to the authorities, who passed laws specifying the maximum that a peasant should be paid, but this had little effect on wages. The first of several sumptuary law
s were also made, dictating exactly how people at every level of society should dress and what they could own, in an effort to enforce social distinctions. These new laws, plus a newly levied poll tax
which had been calculated on pre-plague population figures, led directly to the Peasants' Revolt
. Although quickly put down, the revolt was an early popular reform movement—a precursor to later, more successful uprisings.
Geofrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales give an illuminating picture of many of the different people who made up medieval society, although these portraits are limited mainly to the middle classes. The Wife of Bath is one particularly vibrant character within the Tales and a few years later a real-world equivalent, Margery Kempe
, showed in her autobiography that women had an important part in medieval society.
period was seen as a very stable time compared to the previous years of almost constant warfare. The Reformation
caused not only internal and external conflict, but also had some surprising effects on society. Before the Dissolution of the Monasteries
these institutions had been one of the important parts of social welfare, giving alms
and looking after the destitute, and their disappearance meant that the state would have to adopt this role, which culminated in the Poor law
of 1601. The monasteries also had been the major educational establishments in the country; after they had gone, many new grammar schools were founded and these, along with the earlier introduction of the printing press
, helped to improve literacy. At the same time, though, language suffered when the Laws in Wales Act 1535
, which combined England
and Wales
into one state, outlawed the use of Welsh language
for public offices.
The agricultural reforms which had begun in the 13th century accelerated in the 16th century, with inclosure altering the open field system
and denying many of the poor access to land. Large areas of land which had once been common, and whose usage had been shared between many people, were now being enclosed by the wealthy mainly for extremely profitable sheep farming. This change in farming practices probably contributed to the growth of cities, as the unlanded and unemployed moved to look for work; at the same time, there was a marked growth in the suburb
. These features were described by an 'explorer' of England, John Leland, as not a place for the excluded poor, who were traditionally kept on the outskirts of the city, but a place for the middle classes to escape the crowded centre.
Many new opportunities presented themselves for people to alter their places in society. There were the refinements of both the blast furnace
and gunpowder
which made the arms trade lucrative, and science
, art
, trade
and exploration
were all on the increase. William Shakespeare
is a very good example of the burgeoning society, showing not only that a lowly son of a glovemaker could go on, apparently without a university education, to become an actor, playwright and theatre owner - not highly socially regarded professions - but also that people increasingly had the money and time to attend the theatre.
If Shakespeare and his contemporaries symbolised the start of true social mobility, then Oliver Cromwell
reached the high point of social movement, unequalled even in the 20th century. The son of a farmer, he went on to become a king in all but name, and the effect of that short-lived republicanism
would permanently alter British society.
Cromwell's rise to power was in part the outcome of religious conflict and dissent present since the Lollards of the 14th century. However, these religious radicals and even the Protestant Reformation did not seem to affect society greatly, and in the case of the Reformation it was in England a relatively calm transformation compared to other parts of Europe. There was burning of heretics
on both sides as the two factions vied for power, but the vast majority of laypeople seemed unmoved or even uncertain as to which faith they belonged to. It was only in Stuart
times, when the population felt itself to be strongly Church of England
, that fear of the re-adoption of the Catholic
religion began to cause problems.
The English civil war
was far from just a conflict between two religious faiths, and indeed it had much more to do with divisions within the one Protestant religion. The austere, fundamentalist Puritan
ism on the one side was opposed to what it saw as the crypto-Catholic decadence of the Anglican church on the other. Divisions also formed along the lines of the common people and the gentry, and between the country and city dwellers. It was a conflict that was bound to disturb all parts of society, and a frequent slogan of the time was "the world turned upside down".
In 1660 the Restoration was a quick transition back to the Stuart. Public opinion reacted against the puritanism of the Puritanssuch as the banning of traditional pastimes of gambling, cockfights, the theatre and even Christmas celebrations. The arrival of Charles II—The Merry Monarch—brought a relief from the warlike and then strict society that people had lived in for several years. The theatre returned, along with expensive fashions such as the periwig and even more expensive commodities from overseas. The British Empire
had been expanding since the late 16th century, and along with much wealth returning to the country, expensive luxury items were also appearing. Sugar and coffee from the East Indies
, tea from India and slaves (briought from Africa to the sugar colonies, along with some enslaved servants in England itself) formed the backbone of imperial trade.
One in nine of the population of the country is estimated to have lived in London near the end of the Stuart period and, as a hub of trade, expensive goods from all over accumulated there. Coffee houses were becoming the centres of business and social life, and it has also been suggested that tea might have played its own part in making Britain powerful, as the antiseptic
qualities of tea allowed people to live closer together, protecting them from germs, and making the Industrial Revolution
possible. These products can be considered as beginning the consumer society which, while it promoted trade and brought development and riches to society.
The King James Bible as a standard text it also was a major influence on English literature
, language and thought for centuries to come. Newspaper
s, were new and soon became important tools of social discourse and the diarists of the time such as Samuel Pepys
and John Evelyn
are some of the best sources we have of everyday life in Restoration
England.
included innovations in technology such as Jethro Tull
's seed drill
which allowed greater yields, the process of enclosure
, which had been altering rural society since the Middle Ages, became unstoppable. The new mechanisation needed much larger fields — the layout of the British countryside with the patchwork of fields divided by hedgerows that we see today.
to Britain in the mid-18th century. Not only did existing cities grow but small market towns such as Manchester
, Sheffield
and Leeds
became cities simply by weight of population.
Thanks to increasing national wealth, upward mobility into the middle class, urbanisation, and civic stability, Britain was relatively calm and stable, certainly compared with the revolutions and wars which were convulsing the American colonies, France and other nations at the time. The politics of the French Revolution
did not translate directly into British society to spark an equally seismic revolution, nor did the loss of the American Colonies
dramatically weaken or disrupt Great Britain.
of 1689 granted rights of free religious worship to the non-conformist Protestant sects which had emerged during of the Civil War. Baptists, Congregationalists, Methodists, and Quakers were all allowed to pray freely. These groups took the opportunity of the expanding empire and set up in the Thirteen Colonies
, where they expanded rapidly after the First Great Awakening
.
In response to the religious and moral apathy of the common people, Methodist preachers set up societies divided into classes — intimate meetings where individuals were encouraged to confess their sins to one another and to build each other up. They also took part in love feasts which allowed for the sharing of testimony and mutual surveillance of moral behavior. The success of Methodist revivals
in reaching the poor and working classes concentrated their attention on spiritual goals rather than political grievances.
were wide-ranging and fundamental, leaving their mark not only upon the United Kingdom but upon much of the world which was under Britain's influence during the 19th century. It can even be argued that these changes eclipsed the massive shifts in society during the 20th century; certainly many of the developments of the 20th century have their roots in the 19th. The technology of the Industrial Revolution
had a great impact on society. Inventions not only introduced new industries for employment, but the products and services produced also altered society. Mining
to extract the coal and other raw materials needed to fuel the Industrial Revolution was a major new industry, and before 1842 even women worked in the mines.
The status of the poor is one area in which huge changes occurred. A good illustration of the differences between life in the Georgian and Victorian eras are the writings of two of England's greatest authors, Jane Austen
and Charles Dickens
. Both writers held a fascination for people, society and the details of everyday life but in Austen the poor are almost absent, mainly because they were still the rural poor, remote and almost absent from the minds of the middle classes. For Dickens, only a few years later, the poor were his main subject, as he had partly suffered their fate. The poor now were an unavoidable part of urban society and their existence and plight could not be ignored. Industrialisation made large profits for the entrepreneurs of the times, and their success was in contrast not only to the farm workers who were in competition with imported produce but also to the aristocracy whose landowning wealth was now becoming less significant than business wealth. The British class system created an intricate hierarchy of people which contrasted the new and old rich, the skilled and unskilled, the rural and urban and many more.
John Wesley
's Methodists had succeeded in their campaign for the abolition of slavery
in 1807, but at the same time indentured labour and near-slavery were still common, even at the heart of the Empire. Some of the first attacks on industrialisation were the Luddites' destruction of machines, but this had less to do with factory conditions and more to do with machines mass-producing linen much quicker and cheaper than the handmade products of skilled labourers. The army was called to the areas of Luddite activity such as Lancashire
and Yorkshire
and for a time there were more British soldiers controlling the Luddites than fighting Napoléon in Spain
. The squalid, dangerous and oppressive conditions of many of the new Victorian factories and the surrounding communities which rose to service them became important issues of discontent, and the workers began to form trade union
s to get their working conditions addressed.
The first unions were feared and distrusted,and ways were devised to ban them. The most widely known case was that of the Tolpuddle Martyrs
of 1834, an early attempt at a union whose members were tried on a spurious charge, found guilty and transported
to Australia
. The sentence was challenged and they were released shortly afterwards, but unions were still threatened. It was not until the formation of the TUC in 1868 and the passing of the Trade Union Act 1871
that union membership became reasonably legitimate. Many pieces of legislation were passed to improve working conditions, including the Ten Hours Act 1847 to reduce working hours, and these culminated in the Factory Act 1901.
Many of these acts resulted from the blight of Britain's agricultural depression. Beginning in 1873 and lasting until 1896, many farmers and rural workers were hard-pressed for a stable income. With the decline in wheat prices and land productivity many countrymen were left looking for any hope of prosperity. Although the British parliament gave substantial aid to farmers and laborers, many still complained that rents were too high, wages too low, and the hours laborers were required to work were too long for their income. As a result many workers turned to unions to have their concerns heard and, with the acts listed above as proof, were able to achieve some success.
Another important development during the Victorian era was the improvement of communication links. Stage coaches, canal
s, steam ships and most notably the railways all allowed goods, raw materials and people to be moved about, rapidly facilitating trade and industry. Even later communication methods such as photography
, cinema
, telegraph, telephone
s, car
s and aircraft
, which would not have an impact but also leisure. Many people used the train services to visit the seaside, helped by the Bank Holiday Act of 1871 which created a number of fixed holidays which all sectors of society could enjoy. Large numbers travelling to quiet fishing villages such as Worthing
, Brighton
, Morecambe
and Scarborough began turning them into major tourist centres, and people like Thomas Cook
saw tourism and even overseas travel as viable businesses. The trains became another important factor in regulating and ordering society, with "railway time" being the standard by which clocks were set throughout Britain. Steam ships such as the SS Great Britain
and SS Great Western
made international travel more common but also advanced trade, so that in Britain it was not just the luxury goods of earlier times that were imported into the country but essentials such as corn from the America
and meat from Australia
. One more important innovation in communications was the Penny Black
, the first postage stamp
, which standardised postage to a flat price regardless of distance sent.
The Victorians were impressed by science and progress, and felt that they could improve society in the same way as they were improving technology. The model town of Saltaire
was founded, along with others, as a planned environment with good sanitation and many civic, educational and recreational facilities, although it lacked a pub, which was regarded as a focus of dissent. Similar sanitation
reforms, prompted by the Public Health Acts 1848 and 1869, were made in the crowded, dirty streets of the existing cities, and soap
was the main product shown in the relatively new phenomenon of advertising
. Victorians also strove to improve society through many charities and relief organisations such as the Salvation Army
, the RSPCA and the NSPCC
, and at the same time there were many people such as Florence Nightingale
trying to reform areas of public life. Another new institution was Robert Peel
's "peelers", one of the earliest formal police
forces.
Queen Victoria
was possibly one of the most powerful women in Britain since Queen Elizabeth
, but her status did not dramatically improve the position of women within society. There were many movements to obtain greater rights for women, but voting rights did not come until the next century. The Married Women's Property Act 1882
meant that women did not lose their right to their own property when they got married and could divorce without fear of poverty, although divorce was frowned upon and very rare during the 19th century. The Victorians are often credited with having invented childhood. Despite the image of large Victorian families, the trend was towards smaller families, probably because of lower infant mortality rates and longer life spans. Legislation reduced the working hours of children while raising the minimum working age, and the passing of the Education Act 1870 set the basis for universal primary education
.
. The army was traditionally never a large employer in the nation, and the regular army stood at 247,432 at the start of the war. By 1918 there were about five million people in the army and the fledgling Royal Air Force
, newly formed from the RNAS
and the RFC
, was about the same size of the pre-war army. The almost three million casualties were known as the "lost generation", and such numbers inevitably left society scarred; but even so, some people felt their sacrifice was little regarded in Britain, with poems like Siegfried Sassoon
's Blighters criticising the ill-informed jingoism
of the home front
. Conscription
brought people of many different classes, and also people from all over the empire, together and this mixing was seen as a great leveller which would only accelerate social change after the war.
The social reforms of the previous century continued into the twentieth with the Labour Party
being formed in 1900, but this did not achieve major success until the 1922 general election. Lloyd George
said after the First World War that "the nation was now in a molten state", and his Housing Act 1919 would lead to affordable council housing which allowed people to move out of Victorian inner-city slums. The slums, though, remained for several more years, with tram
s being electrified long before many houses. The Representation of the People Act 1918
gave women householders the vote, but it would not be until 1928 that equal suffrage was achieved.
A short lived post-war boom soon led to a depression
that would be felt worldwide. Particularly hardest hit were the north of England
and Wales
, where unemployment reached 70% in some areas. The General Strike was called during 1926 in support of the miners and their falling wages, but little improved, the downturn continued and the Strike is often seen as the start of the slow decline of the British coal industry. In 1936 two hundred unemployed men walked from Jarrow
to London
in a bid to show the plight of the industrial poor, but the Jarrow March
, as it was known, had little impact and it was not until the Second World War that industrial prospects improved. George Orwell
's book The Road to Wigan Pier
gives a bleak overview of the hardships of the time.
The Second World War is sometimes regarded as simply a continuation of the previous war after a brief period of peace, but the conflicts were significantly different, particularly for British society. The war started with a phony war
in which threats of major actions did not materialise, but thousands of children were moved from the cities into the country. Ten times the number of children were evacuated
in 1939, when there were troops on the early expeditionary force
in France
, but many returned some months later and remained in the cities until the end of the war. There were half the number of military casualties in this war than the last, but the improvements in aerial warfare meant that there were many more civilian casualties and a foreign war seemed much closer to home. The early years of the war in which Britain "stood alone" and the Blitz
spirit which developed as Britain suffered under aerial bombardment helped pull the nation together after the divisions of the previous decade, and campaigns such as "Dig for Victory" helped give the nation a common purpose. The focus on agriculture to feed the nation gave some people their first introduction to the countryside, and women played an important part in the war effort as the Land Girls; there were also half a million women in the armed forces, with even Princess Elizabeth
, the future queen, training as a lorry driver. The measure of freedom women received through these jobs, and working in factories in the jobs of male workers who had gone into battle, is considered as contributing to the later sexual revolution
.
victory after World War II
was seen as a vote by the returning soldiers for what they felt were their rights after serving their country. The most important reform was the founding of the National Health Service
on July 5, 1948. It promised to give cradle to grave care for everyone in the country, regardless of income. Rationing
, which had been instituted during the war, was extended even after the war — with bread rationed between 1946 and 1948, and sweets
rationed until 1954. For some of the very poorest, rationing was beneficial, because their rationed diet was of greater nutritional value than their pre-war diet. Just as after the World War I
, there was a short-lived economic boom after the Second World War, followed by an economic downturn in the early 1950s, which became known as the austerity
years.
Leisure activities began to be more accessible to more people after the war. Holiday camp
s, which had first opened in the 1930s, became popular holiday destinations in the 1950s — and people increasingly had money to pursue their personal hobbies. The BBC
's early television service was given a major boost in 1953 with the coronation
of Elizabeth II
, attracting an estimated audience of twenty million, proving an impetus for people to buy televisions. At the same time, other new consumer goods were coming into homes, and houses were more likely to be owned with mortgages. The markets where people traditionally bought their goods were being replaced by chain store
s and shopping centres, and advertising became widespread. Cars were becoming a significant part of British life, with city-centre congestion and ribbon development
s springing up along many of the major roads. These problems led to the idea of the green belt
to protect the countryside, which was at risk from development.
The 1960s are often considered a time of great shifts in attitudes in the United Kingdom. One notable event was the publication of D. H. Lawrence
's Lady Chatterley's Lover
by Penguin Books
in 1960. Although first printed in 1928, the release in 1960 of an inexpensive mass-market
paperback
version prompted a court case. The prosecuting council's question, "Would you want your wife or servants to read this book?" highlighted how far society had changed, and how little some people had noticed the change. The book was seen as one of the first events in a general relaxation of sexual attitudes. Other elements of the sexual revolution
included the development of The Pill, Mary Quant
's miniskirt
and the 1967 legalisation of homosexuality
. There was a rise in the incidence of divorce and abortion, and a resurgence of the women's liberation movement, whose campaigning helped secure the Equal Pay Act and the Sex Discrimination Act in 1975.
The 1960s were a time of greater disregard for the establishment, with a satire
boom led by people who were willing to attack their elders. Pop music
became a dominant form of expression for the young, and bands like The Beatles
and the Rolling Stones were seen as leaders of youth culture. Youth-based subculture
s such as the mods, rocker
s, hippies and skinhead
s became more visible.
Reforms in education led to the effective elimination of the grammar school
. The rise of the comprehensive school
was aimed at producing a more egalitarian educational system, and there were ever-increasing numbers of people going into higher education
.
In the 1950s and 1960s, immigration of people to the United Kingdom
, mainly from former British colonies in the Caribbean
, India
and Pakistan
, began to escalate, leading to racism
. Dire predictions were made about the effect of these new arrivals on British society (most famously Enoch Powell
's Rivers of Blood speech
), and tension led to a few race riot
s. In the longer term, many people with differing cultures have successfully integrated into the country, and some have risen to high positions.
One important change during the 1980s was the opportunity given to many people to buy their council house
s, which resulted in many more people becoming property owners in a stakeholder society. At the same time, prime minister
Margaret Thatcher
weakened the trade union
s. The United Kingdom's entry into the European Community (EEC) in 1973 meant that Britain was now more closely tied to its member states than ever before, and the country's relationship with the European Union
(as the EEC is now called) is still much debated. The ecology
movements of the 1980s reduced the emphasis on intensive farming
, and promoted organic farming
and conservation
of the countryside.
Religious observance declined notably in Britain during the first half of the 20th century, even with the growth of non-Christian religions due to immigration and travel. (see Islam in the UK) Church of England
attendance has particularly dropped, although charismatic churches like Elim
and AOG are growing. The movement to Keep Sunday Special
seemed to have lost at the beginning of the 21st century.
, H. S. Bennett, Ambrose Raftis, Rodney Hilton
, and Sylvia Thrupp before the rise of the New Social History
in the 1960s.
Burchardt (2007) evaluates the state of English rural history and focuses on an "orthodox" school dealing chiefly with the economic history of agriculture. The orthodox historians made "impressive progress" in quantifying and explaining the growth of output and productivity since the agricultural revolution. A challenge came from a dissident tradition that looked chiefly at the negative social costs of agricultural progress, especially enclosure. In the late 20th century there arose a new school, associated with the journal Rural History. Led by Alun Howkins, it links rural Britain to a wider social history. Burchardt calls for a new countryside history, paying more attention to the cultural and representational aspects that shaped 20th-century rural life.
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
both internally and in its relationship with other nations. The themes of social history
Social history
Social history, often called the new social history, is a branch of History that includes history of ordinary people and their strategies of coping with life. In its "golden age" it was a major growth field in the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still is well represented in history departments...
include demographic history
Demographic history
Demographic history may refer to:*Historical demography*Paleodemography*Prehistoric demography*Classical demography*Medieval demography*Historical world population-See also:*demographic history by region or country**Americas...
, labour history and the working class
Labor history (discipline)
Labor history is a broad field of study concerned with the development of the labor movement and the working class. The central concerns of labor historians include the development of labor unions, strikes, lockouts and protest movements, industrial relations, and the progress of working class and...
, women's history
Women's history
Women's history is the study of the role that women have played in history, together with the methods needed to study women. It includes the study of the history of the growth of woman's rights throughout recorded history, the examination of individual women of historical significance, and the...
, family history, the history of education in England
History of education in England
The history of education in England can be traced back to the Anglo-Saxon settlement of England, or even back to the Roman occupation. During the Middle Ages schools were established to teach Latin grammar, while apprenticeship was the main way to enter practical occupations. Two universities were...
, urban history
Urban History
Urban history is a field of history that examines the historical nature of cities and towns, and the process of urbanization. The approach tends to be multidisciplinary, crossing boundaries into fields like social history, architectural history, urban sociology, urban geography and archaeology.At...
and rural and agricultural history
Rural history
Rural history is historical research into rural life. Agricultural history handles the economic and technological dimensions, while rural history handles the social dimension...
. The topic generally excludes politics, diplomacy and intellectual and constitutional studies.
Prehistoric society
The distant past does not offer us much information on the structures of society, however, major changes in human behaviour make it likely that society must have changed dramatically. In common with much of EuropeEurope
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
, the switch from the hunter-gatherer
Hunter-gatherer
A hunter-gatherer or forage society is one in which most or all food is obtained from wild plants and animals, in contrast to agricultural societies which rely mainly on domesticated species. Hunting and gathering was the ancestral subsistence mode of Homo, and all modern humans were...
lifestyle to farming around 4000 BC must have heralded an enormous shift in all aspects of human life. Nobody knows what changes may have occurred, and recent evidence of permanent buildings and habitation from 3,000 years ago means that these may still have been gradual shifts. One of the most obvious symbols of change in prehistoric society is Stonehenge
Stonehenge
Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument located in the English county of Wiltshire, about west of Amesbury and north of Salisbury. One of the most famous sites in the world, Stonehenge is composed of a circular setting of large standing stones set within earthworks...
. The building of such stone circle
Stone circle
A stone circle is a monument of standing stones arranged in a circle. Such monuments have been constructed across the world throughout history for many different reasons....
s, burial mounds and monument
Monument
A monument is a type of structure either explicitly created to commemorate a person or important event or which has become important to a social group as a part of their remembrance of historic times or cultural heritage, or simply as an example of historic architecture...
s throughout the British Isles
British Isles
The British Isles are a group of islands off the northwest coast of continental Europe that include the islands of Great Britain and Ireland and over six thousand smaller isles. There are two sovereign states located on the islands: the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and...
seems to have required a division of labour
Division of labour
Division of labour is the specialisation of cooperative labour in specific, circumscribed tasks and likeroles. Historically an increasingly complex division of labour is closely associated with the growth of total output and trade, the rise of capitalism, and of the complexity of industrialisation...
. Builders would have needed to dedicate themselves to the task of monument construction to acquire the required skills. Not having time to hunt and farm would make them rely on others to such an extent that specialised farmers would emerge who provided not only for themselves but also for the monument builders.
What we know of prehistoric times apart from their monuments is mostly derived from the remains of burials, and this shows another major change in society: the rise of an aristocracy
Aristocracy
Aristocracy , is a form of government in which a few elite citizens rule. The term derives from the Greek aristokratia, meaning "rule of the best". In origin in Ancient Greece, it was conceived of as rule by the best qualified citizens, and contrasted with monarchy...
. It is perhaps inevitable that a division of labour would give some people less work while others got more, and the increase of lavishly furnished grave
Grave (burial)
A grave is a location where a dead body is buried. Graves are usually located in special areas set aside for the purpose of burial, such as graveyards or cemeteries....
s seems to confirm this. Again, care should be taken not to infer too many complex ideas of social history from grave sites. However, graves do show that people had surplus time for the production of decorative items and they hint at early beliefs about death and religion. This aristocracy, whether it gained its position through martial strength or technological skill, made further social stratification highly likely.
Two other changes which surely influenced social change were the beginning of the Iron Age
Iron Age
The Iron Age is the archaeological period generally occurring after the Bronze Age, marked by the prevalent use of iron. The early period of the age is characterized by the widespread use of iron or steel. The adoption of such material coincided with other changes in society, including differing...
and the building of hill fort
Hill fort
A hill fort is a type of earthworks used as a fortified refuge or defended settlement, located to exploit a rise in elevation for defensive advantage. They are typically European and of the Bronze and Iron Ages. Some were used in the post-Roman period...
s. The first probably necessitated the second, although the need for forts was probably greater due to the growth in population, competition for resources and an unwillingness to simply move on and abandon settled lives or farms.
Fortification and war raise one important unanswered question about British society: the role of invasion. Any incursion of other peoples into the British Isles is bound to have major social effects, nevertheless we do not really know whether these events were invasions, immigrations or simply adoptions of outside ideas; and the native populations may have been mostly killed, slowly supplanted, integrated with the new or just had the aristocracy replaced. These questions relate to many of the changes in culture seen in prehistoric and later times such as the Beaker people, the Celt
Celt
The Celts were a diverse group of tribal societies in Iron Age and Roman-era Europe who spoke Celtic languages.The earliest archaeological culture commonly accepted as Celtic, or rather Proto-Celtic, was the central European Hallstatt culture , named for the rich grave finds in Hallstatt, Austria....
s, the Romans
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
and the Anglo-Saxons
Anglo-Saxons
Anglo-Saxon is a term used by historians to designate the Germanic tribes who invaded and settled the south and east of Great Britain beginning in the early 5th century AD, and the period from their creation of the English nation to the Norman conquest. The Anglo-Saxon Era denotes the period of...
.
Romans
The arrival of the Romans in 54 BC54 BC
Year 54 BC was a year of the pre-Julian Roman calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Appius and Ahenobarbus...
probably did not alter society greatly at first, as it was simply a replacement of the ruling class, but numerous, at first minor, ideas would later gain footholds. Certainly, it wouldn't have affected Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
in the slightest. It is from the Romans, and particularly Tacitus
Tacitus
Publius Cornelius Tacitus was a senator and a historian of the Roman Empire. The surviving portions of his two major works—the Annals and the Histories—examine the reigns of the Roman Emperors Tiberius, Claudius, Nero and those who reigned in the Year of the Four Emperors...
, that we get the earliest detailed written records of Britain and its tribal society. We get fascinating glimpses of society in Britain before the Romans, although only briefly and disparagingly mentioned, particularly the importance of powerful women such as Cartimandua
Cartimandua
Cartimandua or Cartismandua was a queen of the Brigantes, a Celtic people in what is now Northern England, in the 1st century. She came to power around the time of the Roman conquest of Britain, and formed a large tribal agglomeration that became loyal to Rome...
and Boudica
Boudica
Boudica , also known as Boadicea and known in Welsh as "Buddug" was queen of the British Iceni tribe who led an uprising against the occupying forces of the Roman Empire....
. City dwelling was not new to pre-Roman Britain, but it was a lifestyle that the Romans preferred even though available to only a select few Romanised Britons. Romanisation was an important part of the Roman conquest strategy, and British rulers who willingly adopted Roman ways were rewarded as client kings; a good example of this is Togidubnus and his ultramodern Roman-style house at Fishbourne
Fishbourne Roman Palace
Fishbourne Roman Palace is in the village of Fishbourne in West Sussex. The large palace was built in the 1st century AD, around thirty years after the Roman conquest of Britain on the site of a Roman army supply base established at the Claudian invasion in 43 AD. The rectangular palace surrounded...
.
Although the Roman conquest was relatively swift, there was often rebellion, and war with the unconquered Caledonia
Caledonia
Caledonia is the Latinised form and name given by the Romans to the land in today's Scotland north of their province of Britannia, beyond the frontier of their empire...
n tribes in the far north, and so the army became an important part of Roman British life. An army, probably larger than that of most medieval monarchs, gave a low-status Briton the chance of a steady job, the possibility of seeing the rest of the empire, and rewards for service if they survived. The army also brought people to Britain, not just from present day Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
but from all over the empire. To subdue and control the country, the Romans built a major road network which not only was an important civil engineering
Civil engineering
Civil engineering is a professional engineering discipline that deals with the design, construction, and maintenance of the physical and naturally built environment, including works like roads, bridges, canals, dams, and buildings...
project but formed the basis of the country's communication links. The Romans brought many other innovations and ideas such as writing and plumbing, but how many of these things were the preserve of the rich or were even lost and re-appropriated at a later date is uncertain. The one other great social change the Romans brought to Britain was Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
, whose effect on society was probably minimal at first but eventually far succeeded.
Early medieval society
The collapse of the Western Roman EmpireWestern Roman Empire
The Western Roman Empire was the western half of the Roman Empire after its division by Diocletian in 285; the other half of the Roman Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire, commonly referred to today as the Byzantine Empire....
in the 5th century is thought to have brought general strife and anarchy to society, but the actual events are not well understood. Archaeology
Archaeology
Archaeology, or archeology , is the study of human society, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes...
certainly shows a reduction in the expensive goods found before and the Roman cities began to be abandoned, but much of British society had never had such things. Certainly, numerous peoples took advantage of the absence of Roman power, but how they affected British society is far from clear. The hegemony of Roman rule gave way to a selection of splintered, often competing, societies, including later the heptarchy
Heptarchy
The Heptarchy is a collective name applied to the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of south, east, and central Great Britain during late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, conventionally identified as seven: Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, Essex, Kent, Sussex and Wessex...
. Rather than think of themselves as a small part of a larger Roman empire, they reverted to smaller tribal allegiances.
The Anglo-Saxons
Anglo-Saxons
Anglo-Saxon is a term used by historians to designate the Germanic tribes who invaded and settled the south and east of Great Britain beginning in the early 5th century AD, and the period from their creation of the English nation to the Norman conquest. The Anglo-Saxon Era denotes the period of...
' arrival is the most hotly disputed of events, and the extent to which they killed, displaced, or integrated with the existing society is still questioned. What is clear is that a separate Anglo-Saxon society, which would eventually become England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
with a more Germanic
Germanic peoples
The Germanic peoples are an Indo-European ethno-linguistic group of Northern European origin, identified by their use of the Indo-European Germanic languages which diversified out of Proto-Germanic during the Pre-Roman Iron Age.Originating about 1800 BCE from the Corded Ware Culture on the North...
feel, was set up in the south east of the island. These new arrivals had not been conquered by the Romans but their society was perhaps similar to that of Britain. The main difference was their pagan
Paganism
Paganism is a blanket term, typically used to refer to non-Abrahamic, indigenous polytheistic religious traditions....
religion, which the surviving northern areas of non-Saxon rule sought to convert to Christianity. During the 7th century these northern areas, particularly Northumbria
Northumbria
Northumbria was a medieval kingdom of the Angles, in what is now Northern England and South-East Scotland, becoming subsequently an earldom in a united Anglo-Saxon kingdom of England. The name reflects the approximate southern limit to the kingdom's territory, the Humber Estuary.Northumbria was...
, became important sites of learning, with monasteries acting like early universities and figures such as Bede
Bede
Bede , also referred to as Saint Bede or the Venerable Bede , was a monk at the Northumbrian monastery of Saint Peter at Monkwearmouth, today part of Sunderland, England, and of its companion monastery, Saint Paul's, in modern Jarrow , both in the Kingdom of Northumbria...
at the forefront of Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
an thought. In the 9th century Alfred the Great
Alfred the Great
Alfred the Great was King of Wessex from 871 to 899.Alfred is noted for his defence of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of southern England against the Vikings, becoming the only English monarch still to be accorded the epithet "the Great". Alfred was the first King of the West Saxons to style himself...
was extremely interested in creating a literate, educated people and did much to promote the English language
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, even writing books himself. Alfred and his successors unified and brought stability to most of the south of Britain that would eventually become England, and he is also credited with organising the country into shire
Shire
A shire is a traditional term for a division of land, found in the United Kingdom and in Australia. In parts of Australia, a shire is an administrative unit, but it is not synonymous with "county" there, which is a land registration unit. Individually, or as a suffix in Scotland and in the far...
s, the forerunners of current counties
County
A county is a jurisdiction of local government in certain modern nations. Historically in mainland Europe, the original French term, comté, and its equivalents in other languages denoted a jurisdiction under the sovereignty of a count A county is a jurisdiction of local government in certain...
.
Late medieval society
FeudalismFeudalism
Feudalism was a set of legal and military customs in medieval Europe that flourished between the 9th and 15th centuries, which, broadly defined, was a system for ordering society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour.Although derived from the...
, although always a very contentious idea, is often used to describe medieval society. Basically stated, a lord
Lord
Lord is a title with various meanings. It can denote a prince or a feudal superior . The title today is mostly used in connection with the peerage of the United Kingdom or its predecessor countries, although some users of the title do not themselves hold peerages, and use it 'by courtesy'...
owns land or a fief which he allows vassal
Vassal
A vassal or feudatory is a person who has entered into a mutual obligation to a lord or monarch in the context of the feudal system in medieval Europe. The obligations often included military support and mutual protection, in exchange for certain privileges, usually including the grant of land held...
s to work in return for their military service. The vast majority of the people were peasant
Peasant
A peasant is an agricultural worker who generally tend to be poor and homeless-Etymology:The word is derived from 15th century French païsant meaning one from the pays, or countryside, ultimately from the Latin pagus, or outlying administrative district.- Position in society :Peasants typically...
s who would work on the vassal's fiefs. This or a similar system was the basis of later medieval society. It probably existed in some form in England before the Norman conquest, but the Normans
Normans
The Normans were the people who gave their name to Normandy, a region in northern France. They were descended from Norse Viking conquerors of the territory and the native population of Frankish and Gallo-Roman stock...
did much to institute it, either replacing existing lords or by becoming 'overlords' above now-demoted lords. A wealth of information on these social structures can be drawn from one of the best early surveys of its type, the Domesday Book
Domesday Book
Domesday Book , now held at The National Archives, Kew, Richmond upon Thames in South West London, is the record of the great survey of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086...
.
After the Norman conquest of England, English society seemed fixed and unchanging for several centuries, but gradual and significant changes were still taking place, the exact nature of which would not be appreciated until much later. The Norman lords spoke Norman
Norman language
Norman is a Romance language and one of the Oïl languages. Norman can be classified as one of the northern Oïl languages along with Picard and Walloon...
, and in order to work for them or gain advantage, the English had to use the Anglo-Norman language
Anglo-Norman language
Anglo-Norman is the name traditionally given to the kind of Old Norman used in England and to some extent elsewhere in the British Isles during the Anglo-Norman period....
that developed in England. This became a necessary administrative and literary language
Literary language
A literary language is a register of a language that is used in literary writing. This may also include liturgical writing. The difference between literary and non-literary forms is more marked in some languages than in others...
(see Anglo-Norman literature
Anglo-Norman literature
Anglo-Norman literature is literature composed in the Anglo-Norman language developed during the period 1066–1204 when the Duchy of Normandy and England were united in the Anglo-Norman realm.-Introduction:...
), but despite this the English language
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
was not supplanted, and after gaining much in grammar and vocabulary began in turn to replace the language of the rulers. At the same time the population of England more than doubled between Domesday and the end of the 13th century, and this growth was not checked by the almost continual foreign warfare, crusades and occasional civil anarchy.
The crusades are one measure of the ever-increasing power of the church in medieval life, with some estimates suggesting that as many as 40,000 clergy
Clergy
Clergy is the generic term used to describe the formal religious leadership within a given religion. A clergyman, churchman or cleric is a member of the clergy, especially one who is a priest, preacher, pastor, or other religious professional....
were ordained during the 13th century. This is also shown by the spate of cathedral
Cathedral
A cathedral is a Christian church that contains the seat of a bishop...
building, common throughout Europe, at the time. These great buildings would often take several generations to complete, spawning whole communities of artisan
Artisan
An artisan is a skilled manual worker who makes items that may be functional or strictly decorative, including furniture, clothing, jewellery, household items, and tools...
s and craftsmen and offering them jobs for life.
The increase in population led not only to larger cities and towns, but also to the building of many more towns. This did not change England significantly from being a mainly rural society, and many agricultural changes, such as crop rotation
Crop rotation
Crop rotation is the practice of growing a series of dissimilar types of crops in the same area in sequential seasons.Crop rotation confers various benefits to the soil. A traditional element of crop rotation is the replenishment of nitrogen through the use of green manure in sequence with cereals...
, kept the countryside profitable. It has been suggested that the 13th century experienced a mini-industrial revolution, with the increased use of wind power and changes in the wool
Wool
Wool is the textile fiber obtained from sheep and certain other animals, including cashmere from goats, mohair from goats, qiviut from muskoxen, vicuña, alpaca, camel from animals in the camel family, and angora from rabbits....
industry. Wool, always important to the British economy, was traditionally exported to be processed, but it was now frequently processed in England, creating a variety of extra jobs. The export of cloth continued to increase from the 14th century onwards, and after the closing of the port of Calais
Calais
Calais is a town in Northern France in the department of Pas-de-Calais, of which it is a sub-prefecture. Although Calais is by far the largest city in Pas-de-Calais, the department's capital is its third-largest city of Arras....
(which consumed much of the raw wool) by the Spanish
Southern Netherlands
Southern Netherlands were a part of the Low Countries controlled by Spain , Austria and annexed by France...
in the late 16th century, cloth became the primary type of wool exported. Many people were finding different roles and responsibilities within English society too, with the growth of common law
Common law
Common law is law developed by judges through decisions of courts and similar tribunals rather than through legislative statutes or executive branch action...
giving people greater access to the law and the "commons" starting to have a place in the Parliament of England
Parliament of England
The Parliament of England was the legislature of the Kingdom of England. In 1066, William of Normandy introduced a feudal system, by which he sought the advice of a council of tenants-in-chief and ecclesiastics before making laws...
during Edward I of England
Edward I of England
Edward I , also known as Edward Longshanks and the Hammer of the Scots, was King of England from 1272 to 1307. The first son of Henry III, Edward was involved early in the political intrigues of his father's reign, which included an outright rebellion by the English barons...
's time.
Black Death
The Black Death was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, peaking in Europe between 1348 and 1350. Of several competing theories, the dominant explanation for the Black Death is the plague theory, which attributes the outbreak to the bacterium Yersinia pestis. Thought to have...
in the middle of the 14th century, according to some estimates, almost halved the population. Whole villages were wiped out by the plague, but rather than destroying society it managed to reinvigorate it. Before the plague there was a large, perhaps excessive, workforce with overpopulation and people competing for scarce resources. The drop in population meant that labourers were in short supply, and peasants who had once been confined to a landowner's estate now had great incentive to travel to areas without workers. This social mobility was combined with the fact that peasants could charge much more for their services, and this began a switch from indentured labourer to wage earner which signalled the decline of the feudal system.
The peasants' new-found freedoms were very worrying to the authorities, who passed laws specifying the maximum that a peasant should be paid, but this had little effect on wages. The first of several sumptuary law
Sumptuary law
Sumptuary laws are laws that attempt to regulate habits of consumption. Black's Law Dictionary defines them as "Laws made for the purpose of restraining luxury or extravagance, particularly against inordinate expenditures in the matter of apparel, food, furniture, etc." Traditionally, they were...
s were also made, dictating exactly how people at every level of society should dress and what they could own, in an effort to enforce social distinctions. These new laws, plus a newly levied poll tax
Poll tax
A poll tax is a tax of a portioned, fixed amount per individual in accordance with the census . When a corvée is commuted for cash payment, in effect it becomes a poll tax...
which had been calculated on pre-plague population figures, led directly to the Peasants' Revolt
Peasants' Revolt
The Peasants' Revolt, Wat Tyler's Rebellion, or the Great Rising of 1381 was one of a number of popular revolts in late medieval Europe and is a major event in the history of England. Tyler's Rebellion was not only the most extreme and widespread insurrection in English history but also the...
. Although quickly put down, the revolt was an early popular reform movement—a precursor to later, more successful uprisings.
Geofrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales give an illuminating picture of many of the different people who made up medieval society, although these portraits are limited mainly to the middle classes. The Wife of Bath is one particularly vibrant character within the Tales and a few years later a real-world equivalent, Margery Kempe
Margery Kempe
Margery Kempe is known for dictating The Book of Margery Kempe, a work considered by some to be the first autobiography in the English language. This book chronicles, to some extent, her extensive pilgrimages to various holy sites in Europe and Asia, as well as her mystical conversations with God...
, showed in her autobiography that women had an important part in medieval society.
Tudor society
The Tudor dynastyTudor dynasty
The Tudor dynasty or House of Tudor was a European royal house of Welsh origin that ruled the Kingdom of England and its realms, including the Lordship of Ireland, later the Kingdom of Ireland, from 1485 until 1603. Its first monarch was Henry Tudor, a descendant through his mother of a legitimised...
period was seen as a very stable time compared to the previous years of almost constant warfare. The Reformation
English Reformation
The English Reformation was the series of events in 16th-century England by which the Church of England broke away from the authority of the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church....
caused not only internal and external conflict, but also had some surprising effects on society. Before the Dissolution of the Monasteries
Dissolution of the Monasteries
The Dissolution of the Monasteries, sometimes referred to as the Suppression of the Monasteries, was the set of administrative and legal processes between 1536 and 1541 by which Henry VIII disbanded monasteries, priories, convents and friaries in England, Wales and Ireland; appropriated their...
these institutions had been one of the important parts of social welfare, giving alms
Alms
Alms or almsgiving is a religious rite which, in general, involves giving materially to another as an act of religious virtue.It exists in a number of religions. In Philippine Regions, alms are given as charity to benefit the poor. In Buddhism, alms are given by lay people to monks and nuns to...
and looking after the destitute, and their disappearance meant that the state would have to adopt this role, which culminated in the Poor law
Poor Law
The English Poor Laws were a system of poor relief which existed in England and Wales that developed out of late-medieval and Tudor-era laws before being codified in 1587–98...
of 1601. The monasteries also had been the major educational establishments in the country; after they had gone, many new grammar schools were founded and these, along with the earlier introduction of the printing press
Printing press
A printing press is a device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a print medium , thereby transferring the ink...
, helped to improve literacy. At the same time, though, language suffered when the Laws in Wales Act 1535
Laws in Wales Acts 1535-1542
The Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542 were parliamentary measures by which the legal system of Wales was annexed to England and the norms of English administration introduced. The intention was to create a single state and a single legal jurisdiction; frequently referred to as England and Wales...
, which combined England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
and Wales
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
into one state, outlawed the use of Welsh language
Welsh language
Welsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...
for public offices.
The agricultural reforms which had begun in the 13th century accelerated in the 16th century, with inclosure altering the open field system
Open field system
The open field system was the prevalent agricultural system in much of Europe from the Middle Ages to as recently as the 20th century in some places, particularly Russia and Iran. Under this system, each manor or village had several very large fields, farmed in strips by individual families...
and denying many of the poor access to land. Large areas of land which had once been common, and whose usage had been shared between many people, were now being enclosed by the wealthy mainly for extremely profitable sheep farming. This change in farming practices probably contributed to the growth of cities, as the unlanded and unemployed moved to look for work; at the same time, there was a marked growth in the suburb
Suburb
The word suburb mostly refers to a residential area, either existing as part of a city or as a separate residential community within commuting distance of a city . Some suburbs have a degree of administrative autonomy, and most have lower population density than inner city neighborhoods...
. These features were described by an 'explorer' of England, John Leland, as not a place for the excluded poor, who were traditionally kept on the outskirts of the city, but a place for the middle classes to escape the crowded centre.
Many new opportunities presented themselves for people to alter their places in society. There were the refinements of both the blast furnace
Blast furnace
A blast furnace is a type of metallurgical furnace used for smelting to produce industrial metals, generally iron.In a blast furnace, fuel and ore and flux are continuously supplied through the top of the furnace, while air is blown into the bottom of the chamber, so that the chemical reactions...
and gunpowder
Gunpowder
Gunpowder, also known since in the late 19th century as black powder, was the first chemical explosive and the only one known until the mid 1800s. It is a mixture of sulfur, charcoal, and potassium nitrate - with the sulfur and charcoal acting as fuels, while the saltpeter works as an oxidizer...
which made the arms trade lucrative, and science
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
, art
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
, trade
Trade
Trade is the transfer of ownership of goods and services from one person or entity to another. Trade is sometimes loosely called commerce or financial transaction or barter. A network that allows trade is called a market. The original form of trade was barter, the direct exchange of goods and...
and exploration
Exploration
Exploration is the act of searching or traveling around a terrain for the purpose of discovery of resources or information. Exploration occurs in all non-sessile animal species, including humans...
were all on the increase. William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
is a very good example of the burgeoning society, showing not only that a lowly son of a glovemaker could go on, apparently without a university education, to become an actor, playwright and theatre owner - not highly socially regarded professions - but also that people increasingly had the money and time to attend the theatre.
Stuart society
Oliver Cromwell
Oliver Cromwell was an English military and political leader who overthrew the English monarchy and temporarily turned England into a republican Commonwealth, and served as Lord Protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland....
reached the high point of social movement, unequalled even in the 20th century. The son of a farmer, he went on to become a king in all but name, and the effect of that short-lived republicanism
Republicanism
Republicanism is the ideology of governing a nation as a republic, where the head of state is appointed by means other than heredity, often elections. The exact meaning of republicanism varies depending on the cultural and historical context...
would permanently alter British society.
Cromwell's rise to power was in part the outcome of religious conflict and dissent present since the Lollards of the 14th century. However, these religious radicals and even the Protestant Reformation did not seem to affect society greatly, and in the case of the Reformation it was in England a relatively calm transformation compared to other parts of Europe. There was burning of heretics
Heresy
Heresy is a controversial or novel change to a system of beliefs, especially a religion, that conflicts with established dogma. It is distinct from apostasy, which is the formal denunciation of one's religion, principles or cause, and blasphemy, which is irreverence toward religion...
on both sides as the two factions vied for power, but the vast majority of laypeople seemed unmoved or even uncertain as to which faith they belonged to. It was only in Stuart
Stuart period
The Stuart period of English and British history refers to the period between 1603 and 1714, while in Scotland it begins in 1371. These dates coincide with the rule of the Scottish royal House of Stuart, whose first monarch to rule England was James I & VI...
times, when the population felt itself to be strongly Church of England
Church of England
The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...
, that fear of the re-adoption of the Catholic
Catholic
The word catholic comes from the Greek phrase , meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole"...
religion began to cause problems.
The English civil war
English Civil War
The English Civil War was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians and Royalists...
was far from just a conflict between two religious faiths, and indeed it had much more to do with divisions within the one Protestant religion. The austere, fundamentalist Puritan
Puritan
The Puritans were a significant grouping of English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries. Puritanism in this sense was founded by some Marian exiles from the clergy shortly after the accession of Elizabeth I of England in 1558, as an activist movement within the Church of England...
ism on the one side was opposed to what it saw as the crypto-Catholic decadence of the Anglican church on the other. Divisions also formed along the lines of the common people and the gentry, and between the country and city dwellers. It was a conflict that was bound to disturb all parts of society, and a frequent slogan of the time was "the world turned upside down".
In 1660 the Restoration was a quick transition back to the Stuart. Public opinion reacted against the puritanism of the Puritanssuch as the banning of traditional pastimes of gambling, cockfights, the theatre and even Christmas celebrations. The arrival of Charles II—The Merry Monarch—brought a relief from the warlike and then strict society that people had lived in for several years. The theatre returned, along with expensive fashions such as the periwig and even more expensive commodities from overseas. The British Empire
British Empire
The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom. It originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height, it was the...
had been expanding since the late 16th century, and along with much wealth returning to the country, expensive luxury items were also appearing. Sugar and coffee from the East Indies
East Indies
East Indies is a term used by Europeans from the 16th century onwards to identify what is now known as Indian subcontinent or South Asia, Southeastern Asia, and the islands of Oceania, including the Malay Archipelago and the Philippines...
, tea from India and slaves (briought from Africa to the sugar colonies, along with some enslaved servants in England itself) formed the backbone of imperial trade.
One in nine of the population of the country is estimated to have lived in London near the end of the Stuart period and, as a hub of trade, expensive goods from all over accumulated there. Coffee houses were becoming the centres of business and social life, and it has also been suggested that tea might have played its own part in making Britain powerful, as the antiseptic
Antiseptic
Antiseptics are antimicrobial substances that are applied to living tissue/skin to reduce the possibility of infection, sepsis, or putrefaction...
qualities of tea allowed people to live closer together, protecting them from germs, and making the Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times...
possible. These products can be considered as beginning the consumer society which, while it promoted trade and brought development and riches to society.
The King James Bible as a standard text it also was a major influence on English literature
English literature
English literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; for example, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Joseph Conrad was Polish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, J....
, language and thought for centuries to come. Newspaper
Newspaper
A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...
s, were new and soon became important tools of social discourse and the diarists of the time such as Samuel Pepys
Samuel Pepys
Samuel Pepys FRS, MP, JP, was an English naval administrator and Member of Parliament who is now most famous for the diary he kept for a decade while still a relatively young man...
and John Evelyn
John Evelyn
John Evelyn was an English writer, gardener and diarist.Evelyn's diaries or Memoirs are largely contemporaneous with those of the other noted diarist of the time, Samuel Pepys, and cast considerable light on the art, culture and politics of the time John Evelyn (31 October 1620 – 27 February...
are some of the best sources we have of everyday life in Restoration
English Restoration
The Restoration of the English monarchy began in 1660 when the English, Scottish and Irish monarchies were all restored under Charles II after the Interregnum that followed the Wars of the Three Kingdoms...
England.
Georgian society
| Urban-rural distribution, 1600-1801 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Urban | Rural non-farm | Farm |
| 1600 | 8% | 22% | 70% |
| 1700 | 17 | 28 | 55 |
| 1801 | 28 | 36 | 36 |
| Source: E.A. Wrigley, People, Cities and Wealth (1987) p 170 |
Agriculture
Major advances in farming made agriculture more productive and freed up people to work in industry. The British Agricultural RevolutionBritish Agricultural Revolution
British Agricultural Revolution describes a period of development in Britain between the 17th century and the end of the 19th century, which saw an epoch-making increase in agricultural productivity and net output. This in turn supported unprecedented population growth, freeing up a significant...
included innovations in technology such as Jethro Tull
Jethro Tull (agriculturist)
Jethro Tull was an English agricultural pioneer who helped bring about the British Agricultural Revolution. He perfected a horse-drawn seed drill in 1701 that economically sowed the seeds in neat rows, and later a horse-drawn hoe...
's seed drill
Seed drill
A seed drill is a sowing device that precisely positions seeds in the soil and then covers them. Before the introduction of the seed drill, the common practice was to plant seeds by hand. Besides being wasteful, planting was very imprecise and led to a poor distribution of seeds, leading to low...
which allowed greater yields, the process of enclosure
Enclosure
Enclosure or inclosure is the process which ends traditional rights such as mowing meadows for hay, or grazing livestock on common land. Once enclosed, these uses of the land become restricted to the owner, and it ceases to be common land. In England and Wales the term is also used for the...
, which had been altering rural society since the Middle Ages, became unstoppable. The new mechanisation needed much larger fields — the layout of the British countryside with the patchwork of fields divided by hedgerows that we see today.
Industrial Revolution
Historians typically date the coming of the Industrial RevolutionIndustrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times...
to Britain in the mid-18th century. Not only did existing cities grow but small market towns such as Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
, Sheffield
Sheffield
Sheffield is a city and metropolitan borough of South Yorkshire, England. Its name derives from the River Sheaf, which runs through the city. Historically a part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, and with some of its southern suburbs annexed from Derbyshire, the city has grown from its largely...
and Leeds
Leeds
Leeds is a city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. In 2001 Leeds' main urban subdivision had a population of 443,247, while the entire city has a population of 798,800 , making it the 30th-most populous city in the European Union.Leeds is the cultural, financial and commercial...
became cities simply by weight of population.
Middle class and stability
The middle class grew rapidly in the 18th century, especially in the cities. At the top of the scale The legal profession succeeded first, establishing specialist training and associations, and was soon followed by the medical profession. The merchant class prospered with imperial trade. Wahrman (1992) argues that the new urban elites included two types: the gentlemanly capitalist, who participated in the national society, and the independent bourgeois, who was oriented toward the local community. By the 1790s a self-proclaimed middle class, with a particular sociocultural self-perception, had emerged.Thanks to increasing national wealth, upward mobility into the middle class, urbanisation, and civic stability, Britain was relatively calm and stable, certainly compared with the revolutions and wars which were convulsing the American colonies, France and other nations at the time. The politics of the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
did not translate directly into British society to spark an equally seismic revolution, nor did the loss of the American Colonies
American Revolution
The American Revolution was the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which thirteen colonies in North America joined together to break free from the British Empire, combining to become the United States of America...
dramatically weaken or disrupt Great Britain.
Religion
Historians have emphasized the importance of religion, including the domination of the Anglican establishment. The Act of TolerationAct of Toleration 1689
The Act of Toleration was an act of the English Parliament , the long title of which is "An Act for Exempting their Majestyes Protestant Subjects dissenting from the Church of England from the Penalties of certaine Lawes".The Act allowed freedom of worship to Nonconformists who had pledged to the...
of 1689 granted rights of free religious worship to the non-conformist Protestant sects which had emerged during of the Civil War. Baptists, Congregationalists, Methodists, and Quakers were all allowed to pray freely. These groups took the opportunity of the expanding empire and set up in the Thirteen Colonies
Thirteen Colonies
The Thirteen Colonies were English and later British colonies established on the Atlantic coast of North America between 1607 and 1733. They declared their independence in the American Revolution and formed the United States of America...
, where they expanded rapidly after the First Great Awakening
First Great Awakening
The First Awakening was a Christian revitalization movement that swept Protestant Europe and British America, and especially the American colonies in the 1730s and 1740s, leaving a permanent impact on American religion. It resulted from powerful preaching that gave listeners a sense of personal...
.
In response to the religious and moral apathy of the common people, Methodist preachers set up societies divided into classes — intimate meetings where individuals were encouraged to confess their sins to one another and to build each other up. They also took part in love feasts which allowed for the sharing of testimony and mutual surveillance of moral behavior. The success of Methodist revivals
Methodism
Methodism is a movement of Protestant Christianity represented by a number of denominations and organizations, claiming a total of approximately seventy million adherents worldwide. The movement traces its roots to John Wesley's evangelistic revival movement within Anglicanism. His younger brother...
in reaching the poor and working classes concentrated their attention on spiritual goals rather than political grievances.
Cultural history
Scholars have recently been privileging cultural history over social history, with the language and self images of people the chief targets of research. Of special importance is the concept of an emerging consumer society. Studies of middle- and upper-class manners, tastes, and fashions have proliferated, along with studies of gender, national, and racial identities.Victorian era
The social changes during the Victorian eraVictorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
were wide-ranging and fundamental, leaving their mark not only upon the United Kingdom but upon much of the world which was under Britain's influence during the 19th century. It can even be argued that these changes eclipsed the massive shifts in society during the 20th century; certainly many of the developments of the 20th century have their roots in the 19th. The technology of the Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times...
had a great impact on society. Inventions not only introduced new industries for employment, but the products and services produced also altered society. Mining
Mining
Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the earth, from an ore body, vein or seam. The term also includes the removal of soil. Materials recovered by mining include base metals, precious metals, iron, uranium, coal, diamonds, limestone, oil shale, rock...
to extract the coal and other raw materials needed to fuel the Industrial Revolution was a major new industry, and before 1842 even women worked in the mines.
The status of the poor is one area in which huge changes occurred. A good illustration of the differences between life in the Georgian and Victorian eras are the writings of two of England's greatest authors, Jane Austen
Jane Austen
Jane Austen was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature, her realism and biting social commentary cementing her historical importance among scholars and critics.Austen lived...
and Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
. Both writers held a fascination for people, society and the details of everyday life but in Austen the poor are almost absent, mainly because they were still the rural poor, remote and almost absent from the minds of the middle classes. For Dickens, only a few years later, the poor were his main subject, as he had partly suffered their fate. The poor now were an unavoidable part of urban society and their existence and plight could not be ignored. Industrialisation made large profits for the entrepreneurs of the times, and their success was in contrast not only to the farm workers who were in competition with imported produce but also to the aristocracy whose landowning wealth was now becoming less significant than business wealth. The British class system created an intricate hierarchy of people which contrasted the new and old rich, the skilled and unskilled, the rural and urban and many more.
John Wesley
John Wesley
John Wesley was a Church of England cleric and Christian theologian. Wesley is largely credited, along with his brother Charles Wesley, as founding the Methodist movement which began when he took to open-air preaching in a similar manner to George Whitefield...
's Methodists had succeeded in their campaign for the abolition of slavery
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
in 1807, but at the same time indentured labour and near-slavery were still common, even at the heart of the Empire. Some of the first attacks on industrialisation were the Luddites' destruction of machines, but this had less to do with factory conditions and more to do with machines mass-producing linen much quicker and cheaper than the handmade products of skilled labourers. The army was called to the areas of Luddite activity such as Lancashire
Lancashire
Lancashire is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in the North West of England. It takes its name from the city of Lancaster, and is sometimes known as the County of Lancaster. Although Lancaster is still considered to be the county town, Lancashire County Council is based in Preston...
and Yorkshire
Yorkshire
Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...
and for a time there were more British soldiers controlling the Luddites than fighting Napoléon in Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
. The squalid, dangerous and oppressive conditions of many of the new Victorian factories and the surrounding communities which rose to service them became important issues of discontent, and the workers began to form trade union
Trade union
A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...
s to get their working conditions addressed.
The first unions were feared and distrusted,and ways were devised to ban them. The most widely known case was that of the Tolpuddle Martyrs
Tolpuddle Martyrs
The Tolpuddle Martyrs were a group of 19th century Dorset agricultural labourers who were arrested for and convicted of swearing a secret oath as members of the Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers. The rules of the society show it was clearly structured as a friendly society and operated as...
of 1834, an early attempt at a union whose members were tried on a spurious charge, found guilty and transported
Penal transportation
Transportation or penal transportation is the deporting of convicted criminals to a penal colony. Examples include transportation by France to Devil's Island and by the UK to its colonies in the Americas, from the 1610s through the American Revolution in the 1770s, and then to Australia between...
to Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
. The sentence was challenged and they were released shortly afterwards, but unions were still threatened. It was not until the formation of the TUC in 1868 and the passing of the Trade Union Act 1871
Trade Union Act 1871
Trade Union Act 1871 was a Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which legalised trade unions for the first time in the United Kingdom.-Background:...
that union membership became reasonably legitimate. Many pieces of legislation were passed to improve working conditions, including the Ten Hours Act 1847 to reduce working hours, and these culminated in the Factory Act 1901.
Many of these acts resulted from the blight of Britain's agricultural depression. Beginning in 1873 and lasting until 1896, many farmers and rural workers were hard-pressed for a stable income. With the decline in wheat prices and land productivity many countrymen were left looking for any hope of prosperity. Although the British parliament gave substantial aid to farmers and laborers, many still complained that rents were too high, wages too low, and the hours laborers were required to work were too long for their income. As a result many workers turned to unions to have their concerns heard and, with the acts listed above as proof, were able to achieve some success.
Links and progress
Canal
Canals are man-made channels for water. There are two types of canal:#Waterways: navigable transportation canals used for carrying ships and boats shipping goods and conveying people, further subdivided into two kinds:...
s, steam ships and most notably the railways all allowed goods, raw materials and people to be moved about, rapidly facilitating trade and industry. Even later communication methods such as photography
Photography
Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...
, cinema
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
, telegraph, telephone
Telephone
The telephone , colloquially referred to as a phone, is a telecommunications device that transmits and receives sounds, usually the human voice. Telephones are a point-to-point communication system whose most basic function is to allow two people separated by large distances to talk to each other...
s, car
Automobile
An automobile, autocar, motor car or car is a wheeled motor vehicle used for transporting passengers, which also carries its own engine or motor...
s and aircraft
Aircraft
An aircraft is a vehicle that is able to fly by gaining support from the air, or, in general, the atmosphere of a planet. An aircraft counters the force of gravity by using either static lift or by using the dynamic lift of an airfoil, or in a few cases the downward thrust from jet engines.Although...
, which would not have an impact but also leisure. Many people used the train services to visit the seaside, helped by the Bank Holiday Act of 1871 which created a number of fixed holidays which all sectors of society could enjoy. Large numbers travelling to quiet fishing villages such as Worthing
Worthing
Worthing is a large seaside town with borough status in West Sussex, within the historic County of Sussex, forming part of the Brighton/Worthing/Littlehampton conurbation. It is situated at the foot of the South Downs, west of Brighton, and east of the county town of Chichester...
, Brighton
Brighton
Brighton is the major part of the city of Brighton and Hove in East Sussex, England on the south coast of Great Britain...
, Morecambe
Morecambe
Morecambe is a resort town and civil parish within the City of Lancaster in Lancashire, England. As of 2001 it has a resident population of 38,917. It faces into Morecambe Bay...
and Scarborough began turning them into major tourist centres, and people like Thomas Cook
Thomas Cook
Thomas Cook of Melbourne, Derbyshire, England founded the travel agency that is now Thomas Cook Group.- Early days :...
saw tourism and even overseas travel as viable businesses. The trains became another important factor in regulating and ordering society, with "railway time" being the standard by which clocks were set throughout Britain. Steam ships such as the SS Great Britain
SS Great Britain
SS Great Britain was an advanced passenger steamship designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel for the Great Western Steamship Company's transatlantic service between Bristol and New York. While other ships had previously been built of iron or equipped with a screw propeller, Great Britain was the first...
and SS Great Western
SS Great Western
SS Great Western of 1838, was an oak-hulled paddle-wheel steamship; the first purpose-built for crossing the Atlantic and the initial unit of the Great Western Steamship Company. Designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Great Western proved satisfactory in service and was the model for all successful...
made international travel more common but also advanced trade, so that in Britain it was not just the luxury goods of earlier times that were imported into the country but essentials such as corn from the America
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and meat from Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
. One more important innovation in communications was the Penny Black
Penny Black
The Penny Black was the world's first adhesive postage stamp used in a public postal system. It was issued in Britain on 1 May 1840, for official use from 6 May of that year....
, the first postage stamp
Postage stamp
A postage stamp is a small piece of paper that is purchased and displayed on an item of mail as evidence of payment of postage. Typically, stamps are made from special paper, with a national designation and denomination on the face, and a gum adhesive on the reverse side...
, which standardised postage to a flat price regardless of distance sent.
The Victorians were impressed by science and progress, and felt that they could improve society in the same way as they were improving technology. The model town of Saltaire
Saltaire
Saltaire is a Victorian model village within the City of Bradford Metropolitan District, West Yorkshire, England, by the River Aire and the Leeds and Liverpool Canal...
was founded, along with others, as a planned environment with good sanitation and many civic, educational and recreational facilities, although it lacked a pub, which was regarded as a focus of dissent. Similar sanitation
Sanitation
Sanitation is the hygienic means of promoting health through prevention of human contact with the hazards of wastes. Hazards can be either physical, microbiological, biological or chemical agents of disease. Wastes that can cause health problems are human and animal feces, solid wastes, domestic...
reforms, prompted by the Public Health Acts 1848 and 1869, were made in the crowded, dirty streets of the existing cities, and soap
Soap
In chemistry, soap is a salt of a fatty acid.IUPAC. "" Compendium of Chemical Terminology, 2nd ed. . Compiled by A. D. McNaught and A. Wilkinson. Blackwell Scientific Publications, Oxford . XML on-line corrected version: created by M. Nic, J. Jirat, B. Kosata; updates compiled by A. Jenkins. ISBN...
was the main product shown in the relatively new phenomenon of advertising
Advertising
Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...
. Victorians also strove to improve society through many charities and relief organisations such as the Salvation Army
Salvation Army
The Salvation Army is a Protestant Christian church known for its thrift stores and charity work. It is an international movement that currently works in over a hundred countries....
, the RSPCA and the NSPCC
NSPCC
The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children is a United Kingdom charity campaigning and working in child protection.-History:...
, and at the same time there were many people such as Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale OM, RRC was a celebrated English nurse, writer and statistician. She came to prominence for her pioneering work in nursing during the Crimean War, where she tended to wounded soldiers. She was dubbed "The Lady with the Lamp" after her habit of making rounds at night...
trying to reform areas of public life. Another new institution was Robert Peel
Robert Peel
Sir Robert Peel, 2nd Baronet was a British Conservative statesman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 10 December 1834 to 8 April 1835, and again from 30 August 1841 to 29 June 1846...
's "peelers", one of the earliest formal police
Police
The police is a personification of the state designated to put in practice the enforced law, protect property and reduce civil disorder in civilian matters. Their powers include the legitimized use of force...
forces.
Queen Victoria
Victoria of the United Kingdom
Victoria was the monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death. From 1 May 1876, she used the additional title of Empress of India....
was possibly one of the most powerful women in Britain since Queen Elizabeth
Elizabeth I of England
Elizabeth I was queen regnant of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death. Sometimes called The Virgin Queen, Gloriana, or Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth was the fifth and last monarch of the Tudor dynasty...
, but her status did not dramatically improve the position of women within society. There were many movements to obtain greater rights for women, but voting rights did not come until the next century. The Married Women's Property Act 1882
Married Women's Property Act 1882
The Married Women's Property Act 1882 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that significantly altered English law regarding the property rights granted to married women, allowing them to own and control their own property....
meant that women did not lose their right to their own property when they got married and could divorce without fear of poverty, although divorce was frowned upon and very rare during the 19th century. The Victorians are often credited with having invented childhood. Despite the image of large Victorian families, the trend was towards smaller families, probably because of lower infant mortality rates and longer life spans. Legislation reduced the working hours of children while raising the minimum working age, and the passing of the Education Act 1870 set the basis for universal primary education
Primary education
A primary school is an institution in which children receive the first stage of compulsory education known as primary or elementary education. Primary school is the preferred term in the United Kingdom and many Commonwealth Nations, and in most publications of the United Nations Educational,...
.
War and depression
Victorian attitudes and ideals continued into the first years of the 20th century, and what really changed society was the start of World War IWorld War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
. The army was traditionally never a large employer in the nation, and the regular army stood at 247,432 at the start of the war. By 1918 there were about five million people in the army and the fledgling Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force
The Royal Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Formed on 1 April 1918, it is the oldest independent air force in the world...
, newly formed from the RNAS
Royal Naval Air Service
The Royal Naval Air Service or RNAS was the air arm of the Royal Navy until near the end of the First World War, when it merged with the British Army's Royal Flying Corps to form a new service , the Royal Air Force...
and the RFC
Royal Flying Corps
The Royal Flying Corps was the over-land air arm of the British military during most of the First World War. During the early part of the war, the RFC's responsibilities were centred on support of the British Army, via artillery co-operation and photographic reconnaissance...
, was about the same size of the pre-war army. The almost three million casualties were known as the "lost generation", and such numbers inevitably left society scarred; but even so, some people felt their sacrifice was little regarded in Britain, with poems like Siegfried Sassoon
Siegfried Sassoon
Siegfried Loraine Sassoon CBE MC was an English poet, author and soldier. Decorated for bravery on the Western Front, he became one of the leading poets of the First World War. His poetry both described the horrors of the trenches, and satirised the patriotic pretensions of those who, in Sassoon's...
's Blighters criticising the ill-informed jingoism
Jingoism
Jingoism is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as extreme patriotism in the form of aggressive foreign policy. In practice, it is a country's advocation of the use of threats or actual force against other countries in order to safeguard what it perceives as its national interests...
of the home front
Home front
Home front is the informal term commonly used to describe the civilian populace of the nation at war as an active support system of their military....
. Conscription
Conscription
Conscription is the compulsory enlistment of people in some sort of national service, most often military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and continues in some countries to the present day under various names...
brought people of many different classes, and also people from all over the empire, together and this mixing was seen as a great leveller which would only accelerate social change after the war.
The social reforms of the previous century continued into the twentieth with the Labour Party
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
being formed in 1900, but this did not achieve major success until the 1922 general election. Lloyd George
David Lloyd George
David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor OM, PC was a British Liberal politician and statesman...
said after the First World War that "the nation was now in a molten state", and his Housing Act 1919 would lead to affordable council housing which allowed people to move out of Victorian inner-city slums. The slums, though, remained for several more years, with tram
Tram
A tram is a passenger rail vehicle which runs on tracks along public urban streets and also sometimes on separate rights of way. It may also run between cities and/or towns , and/or partially grade separated even in the cities...
s being electrified long before many houses. The Representation of the People Act 1918
Representation of the People Act 1918
The Representation of the People Act 1918 was an Act of Parliament passed to reform the electoral system in the United Kingdom. It is sometimes known as the Fourth Reform Act...
gave women householders the vote, but it would not be until 1928 that equal suffrage was achieved.
A short lived post-war boom soon led to a depression
Great Depression in the United Kingdom
The Great Depression in the United Kingdom, also known as the Great Slump, was a period of national economic downturn in the 1930s, which had its origins in the global Great Depression...
that would be felt worldwide. Particularly hardest hit were the north of England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
and Wales
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
, where unemployment reached 70% in some areas. The General Strike was called during 1926 in support of the miners and their falling wages, but little improved, the downturn continued and the Strike is often seen as the start of the slow decline of the British coal industry. In 1936 two hundred unemployed men walked from Jarrow
Jarrow
Jarrow is a town in Tyne and Wear, England, located on the River Tyne, with a population of 27,526. From the middle of the 19th century until 1935, Jarrow was a centre for shipbuilding, and was the starting point of the Jarrow March against unemployment in 1936.-Foundation:The Angles re-occupied...
to London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
in a bid to show the plight of the industrial poor, but the Jarrow March
Jarrow March
The Jarrow March , was an October 1936 protest march against unemployment and extreme poverty suffered in North East England. The 207 marchers travelled from the town of Jarrow to the Palace of Westminster in London, a distance of almost , to lobby Parliament...
, as it was known, had little impact and it was not until the Second World War that industrial prospects improved. George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
's book The Road to Wigan Pier
The Road to Wigan Pier
The Road to Wigan Pier is a book by the British writer George Orwell, first published in 1937. The first half of this work documents his sociological investigations of the bleak living conditions amongst the working class in Lancashire and Yorkshire in the industrial north of England before World...
gives a bleak overview of the hardships of the time.
The Second World War is sometimes regarded as simply a continuation of the previous war after a brief period of peace, but the conflicts were significantly different, particularly for British society. The war started with a phony war
Phony War
The Phoney War was a phase early in World War II – in the months following Britain and France's declaration of war on Germany in September 1939 and preceding the Battle of France in May 1940 – that was marked by a lack of major military operations by the Western Allies against the German Reich...
in which threats of major actions did not materialise, but thousands of children were moved from the cities into the country. Ten times the number of children were evacuated
Evacuations of civilians in Britain during World War II
Evacuation of civilians in Britain during the Second World War was designed to save the population of urban or military areas in the United Kingdom from aerial bombing of cities and military targets such as docks. Civilians, particularly children, were moved to areas thought to be less at risk....
in 1939, when there were troops on the early expeditionary force
British Expeditionary Force (World War II)
The British Expeditionary Force was the British force in Europe from 1939–1940 during the Second World War. Commanded by General Lord Gort, the BEF constituted one-tenth of the defending Allied force....
in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, but many returned some months later and remained in the cities until the end of the war. There were half the number of military casualties in this war than the last, but the improvements in aerial warfare meant that there were many more civilian casualties and a foreign war seemed much closer to home. The early years of the war in which Britain "stood alone" and the Blitz
Blitz
-Armed conflict:*The Blitz, the German aerial attacks on Britain in WWII. The name Blitz was subsequently applied to many individual bombing campaigns or attacks.*Blitzkrieg, the "lightning war", a strategy of World War 2 Germany-People:...
spirit which developed as Britain suffered under aerial bombardment helped pull the nation together after the divisions of the previous decade, and campaigns such as "Dig for Victory" helped give the nation a common purpose. The focus on agriculture to feed the nation gave some people their first introduction to the countryside, and women played an important part in the war effort as the Land Girls; there were also half a million women in the armed forces, with even Princess Elizabeth
Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom
Elizabeth II is the constitutional monarch of 16 sovereign states known as the Commonwealth realms: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize,...
, the future queen, training as a lorry driver. The measure of freedom women received through these jobs, and working in factories in the jobs of male workers who had gone into battle, is considered as contributing to the later sexual revolution
Sexual revolution
The sexual revolution was a social movement that challenged traditional codes of behavior related to sexuality and interpersonal relationships throughout the Western world from the 1960s into the 1980s...
.
Late 20th century
The Labour PartyLabour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
victory after World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
was seen as a vote by the returning soldiers for what they felt were their rights after serving their country. The most important reform was the founding of the National Health Service
National Health Service
The National Health Service is the shared name of three of the four publicly funded healthcare systems in the United Kingdom. They provide a comprehensive range of health services, the vast majority of which are free at the point of use to residents of the United Kingdom...
on July 5, 1948. It promised to give cradle to grave care for everyone in the country, regardless of income. Rationing
Rationing
Rationing is the controlled distribution of scarce resources, goods, or services. Rationing controls the size of the ration, one's allotted portion of the resources being distributed on a particular day or at a particular time.- In economics :...
, which had been instituted during the war, was extended even after the war — with bread rationed between 1946 and 1948, and sweets
SweetS
was a Japanese idol group. Put together through auditions, the group debuted in 2003 on the avex trax label. Although the group met minor success, they disbanded after three years with the release of a final single in June 2006....
rationed until 1954. For some of the very poorest, rationing was beneficial, because their rationed diet was of greater nutritional value than their pre-war diet. Just as after the World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, there was a short-lived economic boom after the Second World War, followed by an economic downturn in the early 1950s, which became known as the austerity
Austerity
In economics, austerity is a policy of deficit-cutting, lower spending, and a reduction in the amount of benefits and public services provided. Austerity policies are often used by governments to reduce their deficit spending while sometimes coupled with increases in taxes to pay back creditors to...
years.
Leisure activities began to be more accessible to more people after the war. Holiday camp
Holiday camp
Holiday camp, in Britain, generally refers to a resort with a boundary that includes accommodation, entertainment and other facilities.As distinct from camping, accommodation typically consisted of chalets – small buildings arranged either individually or in blocks. Some had three or four storeys,...
s, which had first opened in the 1930s, became popular holiday destinations in the 1950s — and people increasingly had money to pursue their personal hobbies. The BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
's early television service was given a major boost in 1953 with the coronation
Coronation
A coronation is a ceremony marking the formal investiture of a monarch and/or their consort with regal power, usually involving the placement of a crown upon their head and the presentation of other items of regalia...
of Elizabeth II
Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom
Elizabeth II is the constitutional monarch of 16 sovereign states known as the Commonwealth realms: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize,...
, attracting an estimated audience of twenty million, proving an impetus for people to buy televisions. At the same time, other new consumer goods were coming into homes, and houses were more likely to be owned with mortgages. The markets where people traditionally bought their goods were being replaced by chain store
Chain store
Chain stores are retail outlets that share a brand and central management, and usually have standardized business methods and practices. These characteristics also apply to chain restaurants and some service-oriented chain businesses. In retail, dining and many service categories, chain businesses...
s and shopping centres, and advertising became widespread. Cars were becoming a significant part of British life, with city-centre congestion and ribbon development
Ribbon development
Ribbon development means building houses along the routes of communications radiating from a human settlement. Such development generated great concern in the United Kingdom during the 1920s and the 1930s, as well as in numerous other countries....
s springing up along many of the major roads. These problems led to the idea of the green belt
Green belt
A green belt or greenbelt is a policy and land use designation used in land use planning to retain areas of largely undeveloped, wild, or agricultural land surrounding or neighbouring urban areas. Similar concepts are greenways or green wedges which have a linear character and may run through an...
to protect the countryside, which was at risk from development.
The 1960s are often considered a time of great shifts in attitudes in the United Kingdom. One notable event was the publication of D. H. Lawrence
D. H. Lawrence
David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...
's Lady Chatterley's Lover
Lady Chatterley's Lover
Lady Chatterley's Lover is a novel by D. H. Lawrence, first published in 1928. The first edition was printed privately in Florence, Italy with assistance from Pino Orioli; it could not be published openly in the United Kingdom until 1960...
by Penguin Books
Penguin Books
Penguin Books is a publisher founded in 1935 by Sir Allen Lane and V.K. Krishna Menon. Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its high quality, inexpensive paperbacks, sold through Woolworths and other high street stores for sixpence. Penguin's success demonstrated that large...
in 1960. Although first printed in 1928, the release in 1960 of an inexpensive mass-market
Mass marketing
Mass marketing is a market coverage strategy in which a firm decides to ignore market segment differences and go after the whole market with one offer. It is type of marketing of a product to a wide audience. The idea is to broadcast a message that will reach the largest number of people possible...
paperback
Paperback
Paperback, softback or softcover describe and refer to a book by the nature of its binding. The covers of such books are usually made of paper or paperboard, and are usually held together with glue rather than stitches or staples...
version prompted a court case. The prosecuting council's question, "Would you want your wife or servants to read this book?" highlighted how far society had changed, and how little some people had noticed the change. The book was seen as one of the first events in a general relaxation of sexual attitudes. Other elements of the sexual revolution
Sexual revolution
The sexual revolution was a social movement that challenged traditional codes of behavior related to sexuality and interpersonal relationships throughout the Western world from the 1960s into the 1980s...
included the development of The Pill, Mary Quant
Mary Quant
Mary Quant OBE FCSD is a British] fashion designer and British fashion icon, who was instrumental in the mod fashion movement. She was one of the designers who took credit for inventing the miniskirt and hot pants. Born in Blackheath, London, to Welsh parents, Quant brought fun and fantasy to...
's miniskirt
Miniskirt
A miniskirt, sometimes hyphenated as mini-skirt, is a skirt with a hemline well above the knees – generally no longer than below the buttocks; and a minidress is a dress with a similar meaning...
and the 1967 legalisation of homosexuality
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...
. There was a rise in the incidence of divorce and abortion, and a resurgence of the women's liberation movement, whose campaigning helped secure the Equal Pay Act and the Sex Discrimination Act in 1975.
The 1960s were a time of greater disregard for the establishment, with a satire
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
boom led by people who were willing to attack their elders. Pop music
Pop music
Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...
became a dominant form of expression for the young, and bands like The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
and the Rolling Stones were seen as leaders of youth culture. Youth-based subculture
Subculture
In sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, a subculture is a group of people with a culture which differentiates them from the larger culture to which they belong.- Definition :...
s such as the mods, rocker
Rocker (subculture)
Rockers, leather boys or ton-up boys are a biker subculture that originated in the United Kingdom during the 1950s. It was mainly centered around British cafe racer motorcycles and rock and roll music....
s, hippies and skinhead
Skinhead
A skinhead is a member of a subculture that originated among working class youths in the United Kingdom in the 1960s, and then spread to other parts of the world. Named for their close-cropped or shaven heads, the first skinheads were greatly influenced by West Indian rude boys and British mods,...
s became more visible.
Reforms in education led to the effective elimination of the grammar school
Grammar school
A grammar school is one of several different types of school in the history of education in the United Kingdom and some other English-speaking countries, originally a school teaching classical languages but more recently an academically-oriented secondary school.The original purpose of mediaeval...
. The rise of the comprehensive school
Comprehensive school
A comprehensive school is a state school that does not select its intake on the basis of academic achievement or aptitude. This is in contrast to the selective school system, where admission is restricted on the basis of a selection criteria. The term is commonly used in relation to the United...
was aimed at producing a more egalitarian educational system, and there were ever-increasing numbers of people going into higher education
Higher education
Higher, post-secondary, tertiary, or third level education refers to the stage of learning that occurs at universities, academies, colleges, seminaries, and institutes of technology...
.
In the 1950s and 1960s, immigration of people to the United Kingdom
Immigration to the United Kingdom
Immigration to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland since 1922 has been substantial, in particular from Ireland and the former colonies and other territories of the British Empire - such as India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Caribbean, South Africa, Kenya and Hong Kong - under...
, mainly from former British colonies in the Caribbean
Caribbean
The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...
, India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
and Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
, began to escalate, leading to racism
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
. Dire predictions were made about the effect of these new arrivals on British society (most famously Enoch Powell
Enoch Powell
John Enoch Powell, MBE was a British politician, classical scholar, poet, writer, and soldier. He served as a Conservative Party MP and Minister of Health . He attained most prominence in 1968, when he made the controversial Rivers of Blood speech in opposition to mass immigration from...
's Rivers of Blood speech
Rivers of Blood speech
The "Rivers of Blood" speech was a speech criticising Commonwealth immigration, as well as proposed anti-discrimination legislation in the United Kingdom made on 20 April 1968 by Enoch Powell , the Conservative Member of Parliament for Wolverhampton South West...
), and tension led to a few race riot
Race riot
A race riot or racial riot is an outbreak of violent civil disorder in which race is a key factor. A phenomenon frequently confused with the concept of 'race riot' is sectarian violence, which involves public mass violence or conflict over non-racial factors.-United States:The term had entered the...
s. In the longer term, many people with differing cultures have successfully integrated into the country, and some have risen to high positions.
One important change during the 1980s was the opportunity given to many people to buy their council house
Council house
A council house, otherwise known as a local authority house, is a form of public or social housing. The term is used primarily in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. Council houses were built and operated by local councils to supply uncrowded, well-built homes on secure tenancies at...
s, which resulted in many more people becoming property owners in a stakeholder society. At the same time, prime minister
Prime minister
A prime minister is the most senior minister of cabinet in the executive branch of government in a parliamentary system. In many systems, the prime minister selects and may dismiss other members of the cabinet, and allocates posts to members within the government. In most systems, the prime...
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990...
weakened the trade union
Trade union
A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...
s. The United Kingdom's entry into the European Community (EEC) in 1973 meant that Britain was now more closely tied to its member states than ever before, and the country's relationship with the European Union
European Union
The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
(as the EEC is now called) is still much debated. The ecology
Ecology
Ecology is the scientific study of the relations that living organisms have with respect to each other and their natural environment. Variables of interest to ecologists include the composition, distribution, amount , number, and changing states of organisms within and among ecosystems...
movements of the 1980s reduced the emphasis on intensive farming
Intensive farming
Intensive farming or intensive agriculture is an agricultural production system characterized by the high inputs of capital, labour, or heavy usage of technologies such as pesticides and chemical fertilizers relative to land area....
, and promoted organic farming
Organic farming
Organic farming is the form of agriculture that relies on techniques such as crop rotation, green manure, compost and biological pest control to maintain soil productivity and control pests on a farm...
and conservation
Conservation biology
Conservation biology is the scientific study of the nature and status of Earth's biodiversity with the aim of protecting species, their habitats, and ecosystems from excessive rates of extinction...
of the countryside.
Religious observance declined notably in Britain during the first half of the 20th century, even with the growth of non-Christian religions due to immigration and travel. (see Islam in the UK) Church of England
Church of England
The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...
attendance has particularly dropped, although charismatic churches like Elim
Elim Pentecostal Church
The Elim Pentecostal Church is a UK-based Pentecostal Christian denomination.-History:George Jeffreys , a Welshman, founded the Elim Pentecostal Church in Monaghan, Ireland in 1915. Jeffreys was an evangelist with a Welsh Congregational church background. He was converted at age 15 during the...
and AOG are growing. The movement to Keep Sunday Special
Keep Sunday Special
Keep Sunday Special is a British campaign group set up in 1985 by Dr Michael Schluter CBE to oppose plans to introduce Sunday trading in England and Wales...
seemed to have lost at the beginning of the 21st century.
Historiography
The social history of the medieval period was primarily developed by Eileen PowerEileen Power
Eileen Edna LePoer Power was an important British economic historian and medievalist. Eileen Power was the eldest daughter of a stockbroker and was born at Altrincham in 1889. She was a sister of Rhoda Power, the children's writer and broadcaster...
, H. S. Bennett, Ambrose Raftis, Rodney Hilton
Rodney Hilton
Rodney Howard Hilton, , was an English Marxist historian of the late medieval period and the transition from feudalism to capitalism. He was born in Manchester and studied at Balliol College Oxford University and was a member of the Communist Party Historians Group before leaving the party in 1956...
, and Sylvia Thrupp before the rise of the New Social History
Social history
Social history, often called the new social history, is a branch of History that includes history of ordinary people and their strategies of coping with life. In its "golden age" it was a major growth field in the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still is well represented in history departments...
in the 1960s.
Burchardt (2007) evaluates the state of English rural history and focuses on an "orthodox" school dealing chiefly with the economic history of agriculture. The orthodox historians made "impressive progress" in quantifying and explaining the growth of output and productivity since the agricultural revolution. A challenge came from a dissident tradition that looked chiefly at the negative social costs of agricultural progress, especially enclosure. In the late 20th century there arose a new school, associated with the journal Rural History. Led by Alun Howkins, it links rural Britain to a wider social history. Burchardt calls for a new countryside history, paying more attention to the cultural and representational aspects that shaped 20th-century rural life.
Historiography
- Burchardt, Jeremy. "Agricultural History, Rural History, or Countryside History?" Historical Journal 2007 50(2): 465-481. Issn: 0018-246x
- Hawke, Gary. "Reinterpretations of the Industrial Revolution" in Patrick O'Brien and Roland Quinault, eds. The Industrial Revolution and British Society (1993) pp 54-78
- Navickas, Katrina. "What happened to class? New histories of labour and collective action in Britain," Social History, May 2011, Vol. 36 Issue 2, pp 192-204
- Thompson, E. P. The Essential E. P. Thompson (2001). 512 pp. highly influential essays on 19th century working class
- Wilson, Adrian, ed. Rethinking Social History: English Society, 1570-1920 and Its Interpretation (1993). 342 pp.