The 18th Century: From Stuarts to American Independence
UNIT 7: The Eighteenth Century (1688-1789)
Introduction
End of the Stuart dynasty and the House of Hanover: William and Mary of Orange ascended the throne as joint monarchs and defenders of Protestantism, followed by Queen Anne, the second of James II’s daughters. The end of the Stuart line with the death of Queen Anne led to the drawing up of the Act of Settlement in 1701, which provided that only Protestants could hold the throne. The next in line according to the provisions of this act was George of Hanover, yet Stuart princes remained in the wings. The Stuart legacy was to linger on in the form of claimants to the Crown for another century. Monarchs lineage: William III 1689-1702/ Mary II 1689-1694/ Anne (Mary II’s sister) 1702-1714 / George I 1714-1727/ George II 1727-1760 House of Hanover / George III 1760-1820.
The Glorious Revolution
The Glorious Revolution or Revolution of 1688 took place from 1688 to 1689. With it the reigning king, James II of England, was replaced with the joint monarchy of his protestant daughter Mary and her Dutch husband, William of Orange. William’s successful invasion of England with a Dutch fleet and army was what led to his ascending of the English throne as William III of England jointly with his wife Mary II of England. To understand why James II’s most powerful subjects eventually rose up in revolt against him we need to understand the deep-seated fear of ‘popery’ in Stuart England. Popery meant more than just a fear or hatred of Catholics and the Catholic Church. It reflected a widely-held belief in an elaborate conspiracy theory, that Catholics were actively plotting the overthrow of church and state. In their place would be established a Catholic tyranny, with England becoming merely a satellite state, under the control of an all-powerful Catholic monarch, in this era of the Glorious Revolution. But, finally the Revolution permanently ended any chance of Catholicism becoming re-established in England. On the other hand, in April 1687 the declaration of indulgence was issued. This declaration a pair of proclamations made by James II of England and VII of Scotland which broad religious freedom in England and allowing persons to worship in their homes or chapels as they saw fit, and it ended the requirement of affirming religious oaths before gaining employment in government office. Consequences:
Declaration of Rights (later the Bill of Rights, 1689): is an Act of the Parliament of England passed on 16 December 1689. It was a restatement in statutory form of the Declaration of Right presented by the Convention Parliament to William and Mary in March 1689, inviting them to become joint sovereigns of England.
This act followed these points:
- Illegality of prerogative suspending and dispensing powers, prohibition of taxation without parliamentary consent and need for regular parliaments.
- Parliament also gained powers over taxation, royal succession, appointments and over the right of the crown to wage war independently.
- There were changes to the British state: Bank of England founded in 1694.
- Greater scrutiny of crown expenditure.
- Negative consequences for Scotland and Ireland.
House of Hanover
When Mary dies of smallpox in 1964, William is sole ruler of the three kingdoms. And now the problems for succession begin because neither William nor James II’s surviving daughter, Anne had any children so there was an uncertainty on the future of succession. While Protestants were worried about that because the throne would eventually revert to James II, to his son, or to one of the many other Catholic claimants. In 1701, The Act of Settlement was established so, after the deaths of William and Anne, according to this act, the throne would return to the descendants of James I’s. So, succession to the throne went to Princess Sophia, Electress of Hanover (James I’s granddaughter) and her Protestant heirs. However, Sophia died before Queen Anne, therefore the succession passed to her son, George, Elector of Hanover, who in 1714 became King George I. After George’s death in 1727, the throne went to her son, George II, his reign lasted from (1727-1760) and then it continued with George III from (1760-1820). From 1714 through to 1820, there were only three monarchs so, the Hanoverian period was remarkably stable, not least because of the longevity of its kings.
Acts of Union: The creation of Great Britain
The Acts of Union were two Acts of Parliament: the Union with Scotland Act 1706 passed by the Parliament of England, and the Union with England Act passed in 1707 by the Parliament of Scotland. They put into effect the terms of the Treaty of Union that had been agreed on 22 July 1706, following negotiation between commissioners representing the parliaments of the two countries. The Acts joined the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland into a single, united kingdom named “Great Britain”.
Sea Power
Britain’s development between 1714 and 1837 had an important international and military dimension. An empire based on commerce, sea power and naval dominance consolidated British overseas settler societies. At the beginning of the 18th century, Britain possessed colonies along the eastern seaboard of North America, numerous sugar islands in the Caribbean and a foothold in Bengal. Georgia became a British colony in 1732. Britain acquired the Ceded Islands in 1763. Despite the disastrous loss of the 13 North American colonies in the American War of Independence in 1783, Britain subsequently acquired settlements in New South Wales, Sierra Leone, Trinidad, Demerara, Mauritius and the Cape Colony. She also extended her hold over Bengal and Madras. British oceanic enterprise provided the shipping, commerce, settlers and entrepreneurs that held these far-flung territories together. In the Indian Ocean, the English India Company dominated trade with India, south east Asia and China. The triangular slave trade was an important feature of British transatlantic commerce, taking over three million black slaves as workers for the plantations in America and the West Indies until the trade was abolished in 1807. Trade was backed by naval power and by efficient handling of private and public credit, including substantial public borrowing via the Bank of England.
Life in the eighteenth century
In the 18th century Britain becomes the world’s first industrial nation and a few decades the Industrialisation spread to Western Europe and The United States. This was a period of transition to new manufacturing processes. This transition included going from hand production methods to machines, new chemical manufacturing and iron production processes, improved efficiency of water power, the increasing use of steam power and development of machine tools. Moreover, we are talking about the Enlightenment or Age of Reason, a time in which all these process would radically change human society and the environment.
Independence: 13 Colonies
The thirteen colonies is the name of the the British colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America founded between 1607 and 1733. They were: Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, Connecticut, Massachusetts Bay, Maryland, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Virginia, New York, North Carolina, and Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. The Boston Tea Party was a political protest by the Sons of Liberty in Boston, a city in the British colony of Massachusetts. They were against the tax policy of the British government and the East India Company that controlled all the tea imported into the colonies. On December 16, 1773, after officials in Boston refused to return three shiploads of taxed tea to Britain, a group of colonists boarded the ships and destroyed the tea by throwing it into Boston Harbor. This was the culmination of a resistance movement throughout British America against the Tea Act, which had been passed by the British Parliament in 1773. Colonists objected to the Tea Act because they believed that it violated their rights as Englishmen, they wanted to be taxed only by their own elected representatives and not by a British parliament in which they were not represented. So they protested with “No taxation without representation” a slogan originating during that time as a primary grievance of the British colonists in the Thirteen Colonies, one of the major causes of the American Revolution.
American War of Independence (1775-1783)
The American War of Independence, The American Revolutionary War or simply the Revolutionary War in the United States took place from 1775 to 1783. The conflict began as a war between the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Thirteen Colonies that we have mentioned before and grew into a world war between Britain on one side and the newly formed United States, France, Netherlands and Spain on the other. And as a result was an American victory and European recognition of the independence of the United States. One of the major causes of the American Revolution were the protests of the colonist. The British Parliament insisted it had the right to tax colonists to finance the colonies’ military defense, which had become increasingly expensive due to the French and Indian Wars.
But the colonies argued that they already spent much through local government to maintain their place in the British Empire and claimed that, as they were British subjects, imposing laws in Parliament upon the colonists, and particularly taxation without representation, was illegal. So they formed a unifying Continental Congress and a shadow government in each colony, though at first wishing to remain in the Empire and loyal to the Crown. Then, in 1773 the Boston Tea Party took place. This was The American boycott of taxed British tea where shiploads of tea were destroyed. After repeated pleas to the British monarchy for intervention with Parliament, any chance of a compromise ended when the Congress were declared traitors by royal decree, and they responded by declaring the independence of a new sovereign nation, the United States of America, on July 4, 1776. With the Spain’s involvement the result was the expulsion of British armies from West Florida, securing the American southern flank. The British naval victory at the Battle of the Saintes thwarted a French and Spanish plan to drive Britain out of the Caribbean but the preparations for a second attempt were halted because the declaration of peace was established. A long Franco-Spanish siege of the British stronghold at Gibraltar also resulted in defeat. France, Spain and the Dutch Republic all secretly provided supplies, ammunition and weapons to the revolutionaries starting early in 1776. By that time the Americans were in full control of every state, but then the British Royal Navy captured New York City and made it their main base. British strategy relied on mobilizing Loyalist militia although was never fully realized. A British invasion from Canada in 1777 ended in the capture of the British army at the Battles of Saratoga. That American victory persuaded France to enter the war in early 1778, and, over the next four years, Spain and the Dutch Republic also went to war with Britain. French involvement proved decisive but it drove the country into massive debt. French naval victory just outside Chesapeake Bay led to a siege by combined French and Continental armies that forced a second British army to surrender at Yorktown, Virginia in 1781 but then peace negotiations began and, in 1783, the “Treaty of Paris” was signed. The Treaty of Paris ended the war in 1783 and recognized the sovereignty of the United States over the territory bounded roughly by what is now Canada to the north, Florida to the south, and the Mississippi River to the west. Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) : One of the most important figures of this time was Mary Wollstonecraft, an eighteenth-century British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women’s rights. She is best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), in which she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men, but it is just a question of lack education. She suggests that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagines a social order founded on reason.