16.

1) The Crimean War.

The Crimean War against Russia was waged from 1853 to 1856, with France and the Ottoman Empire as allies.

Causes of the war:

• a long-running contest between major European powers for influence over territories of the declining Ottoman Empire.

• the conflict of great powers in the Middle East and was more directly caused by Russian demands to exercise protection over the Orthodox subjects of the Ottoman sultan.Fearing increased Russian power and an upset to the balance of power on the Continent, Great Britain and France declared war on Russia.

• the dispute between Russia and France over the privileges of the Russian Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches in the holy places in Palestine.

• Main events:

• Supported by Britain, the Turks took a firm stand against the Russians, who occupied the Danubian principalities (modern Romania) on the Russo-Turkish border in July 1853.

• The British fleet was ordered to Constantinople (Istanbul) on September 23.

• On October 4 the Turks declared war on Russia and in the same month opened an offensive against the Russians in the Danubian principalities.

• After the Russian Black Sea fleet destroyed a Turkish squadron at Sinope 30 November 1853 , on the Turkish side of the Black Sea, the British and French fleets entered the Black Sea on Jan. 3, 1854, to protect Turkish transports.

• On March 28, Britain and France declared war on Russia. To satisfy Austria and avoid having that country also enter the war, Russia evacuated the Danubian principalities. Austria occupied them in August 1854.

• In September 1854 the allies landed troops in Russian Crimea, on the north shore of the Black Sea, and began a year-long siege of the Russian fortress of Sevastopol. After just under one year of constant battle, Finally, on Sept. 11, 1855, three days after a successful French assault on the Malakhov, the Russian abandoned the fortress, blowing up their fortifications and sinking their own ships. Meanwhile, at nearby Balaklava, British troops charged down a narrow valley that was flanked by Russian guns on both sides.

Major engagements were fought at:

the Alma River on September 20,at Balaklava on October 25, and at Inkerman on November 5.

Secondary operations of the war were conducted in the Caucasus and in the Baltic Sea.

Results:

The Congress of Paris worked out the final settlement from February 25 to March 30.

The resulting Treaty of Paris, signed on March 30, 1856, guaranteed the integrity of Ottoman Turkey and obliged Russia to surrender southern Bessarabia, at the mouth of the Danube. The Black Sea was neutralized, and the Danube River was opened to the shipping of all nations.

The Crimean War was managed and commanded very poorly on both sides. Disease accounted for a disproportionate number of the approximately 250,000 men lost by each side.

The war did not settle the relations of the powers in eastern Europe. It did awaken the new Russian emperor Alexander II (who succeeded Nicholas I in March 1855) to the need to overcome Russia's backwardness in order to compete successfully with the other European powers. A further result of the war was that Austria, having sided with Great Britain and France, lost the support of Russia in central European affairs. Austria became dependent on Britain and France, which failed to support that country, leading to the Austrian defeats in 1859 and 1866 that, in turn, led to the unification of Italy and Germany. 

 France seemed to have gained the most from the Crimean War. French armies had won the most impressive victories in the final attacks on Sebastopol, and France supplanted Russia as the dominant power in Europe. The Ottoman Empire, a first glance, also seemed to gain much from the conflict. However, the war actually hastened its slow disintegration which was finally complete by the outbreak of World War I. The British gain was at first slow to be realized, but because of the concerns about the British military, reforms were finally instituted which began the modernization of the army.  As in most defeats, the loser learns more than the winner.  Russia instituted reforms following the Crimean war, both militarily and civilian, and began a slow national modernization.

2. Conservatives against Liberals.

The politics were highly fractionalized. The fractions settled down into two-party system when the aristocratic Whigs, radicals, and ex-conservative Peelites—supporters of the late prime minister Sir Robert Peel, who had broken with the Conservatives over the party’s opposition to free trade—coalesced into the Liberal Party in1859, and William Gladstone carried the party through governments in the late 19th century. As a prime-minister (1868-1874) Gladstone is best known for:

• laissez-faire policy (s an economic environment in which actions between private parties are free from government control, with only regulations sufficient to protect property rights against theft and agression.

• patronage destroyed ( a hereditary right to be appointed to governmental or political positions)

• national system of primarly schools (Elementary education Act 1880 It provided England with an adequate system of elementary schools for the first time and required attendance)

• simplified legal process

• abolished flogging in army

• gave union legal protection of their funds

Disraeli (1874-1880):

• Decriminalized trade unions, enabled workers to sue employers in the civil courts

• Promoted social welfare for workers (the Public Health Act of 1875, which cleaned Britian's filthy cities, and he improved working conditions for Britian's lower classes.Advocated the rights of the labor classes, especially the right to air grievances through peaceful picketing. He focused on social reforms to improve public health and prevent labor abuses.)

• Purchased 50% of Suez Canal

• As a legislator, one of Disraeli's prominent achievements was the the 1867 Reform Act, which increased enfranchisement of the people by reducing the monetary requirements for voting and effecting a redistribution of parliamentary seats.

• Diplomatic victory at the Congress of Berlin (in 1878, in the wake of the Russo-turkish war 1877-1878, the meeting's aim was to reorganize the countries of the Balkanas,to diminish Russian gains in the region and to prevent the rise of a big Bulgaria. As a result, Ottoman holdings in Europe declined sharply; Bulgaria was established as an independent principality inside the Ottoman Empire; Austria-Hungary also took over Bosnia and Herzegovina, whereas Britain took over Cyprus.)

Disraeli’s aims at the congress of Berlin

• Empire and Liberty

• To extend the size and scope of the British Empire.

• To associate the Tory party with the successes of Empire.

• Populist – used the empire as a means of encouraging votes they would not normally gain

• Disraeli told the working class that the Tories were involving the British people in the Empire.

• ‘Peace with Honour’ – Britain got what she wanted at the congress without annoying any of the other great powers.

• It was all done on British terms.

• Cyprus – a British naval base stopped Russia getting to the Mediterranean sea and stopped Russian access to India.

• Egypt – GB gained more control without annoying France.

One trend that can be traced in this period was the steady diminishment of the Whig landowning element in the Liberal Party. Landowners, even from traditional Whig families drifted to the Conservative Party, which better represented their economic interests by its support of protection for British agricul- ture rather than the free trade/cheap bread policies of the Liberals and shared their concern over the fate of the large landowners of Ireland, increasingly under assault from Irish nationalists who were in some cases supported by the Liberals. The Conservative Party was eventually renamed the Conservative and Unionist Party to reflect its support for the union of Ireland with Britain.

The Conservative gain from the landowning element moving from the Liberal to the Conservative Party was mitigated by the fact that land- owners were a less dominant element in British life due to the decline of English agriculture and the rise of the industrial economy and financial services.

The growth of cities, where landowners could not hope to have the same influence they did over the rural population, greatly diminished gentry and aristocratic power, as did the Reform Acts of 1867 and 1884 and the Redistribution of Seats Act of 1885, which broadened the parliamentary franchise to include many more poor and working-class people, who were largely insulated from landowning influence.

At this time a new kind of politics was born. Reasons:

Stages of enfranchising:

The three Reform Acts, of 1832, 1867, and 1884, all extended voting rights to previously disfranchised citizens. The first act, which was the most controversial, reapportioned representation in Parliament in a way fairer to the cities of the industrial north, which had experienced tremendous growth. This act not only re-apportioned representation in Parliament, thus making that body more accurately represent the citizens of the country, but also gave the power of voting to those lower in the social and economic scale, for the act extended the right to vote to any man owning a household worth £10. Approximately one man in five now had the right to vote.

The 1867 Reform Act extended the right to vote still further down the class ladder, adding just short of a million voters — including many workingmen — and doubling the electorate, to almost two million in England and Wales. 

The 1884 bill and the 1885 Redistribution Act tripled the electorate again, giving the vote to most agricultural laborers.  By this time, voting was becoming a right rather than the property of the privileged.

However, women were not granted voting rights until the Act of 1918, which enfranchised all men over 21 and women over thirty. This last bit of discrimination was eliminated 10 years later (in 1928) by the Equal Franchise Act.

As the electorate grew, politicians cultivated more of a mass appeal. No longer was it sufficient to be a master maneuverer in the backrooms of Westminster: The politician who hoped to be leader of his party and prime minister had to cultivate a public image as well.

Often credited as the first politician to create an electorally power- ful public image was Henry John Temple, third viscount Palmerston (1784–1865), who sat in the House of Commons for more than 50 years and served twice as prime minister, from 1855 to 1858 and from 1859 to his death in 1865. Palmerston, prime minister during the Crimean War, was identified with an aggressive foreign policy and a strong, uncomplicated English patriotism.

Few British politicians have ever crafted such vivid public person- alities as the leaders of the generation after Palmerston: Conservative Benjamin Disraeli (1804–81; prime minister, 1868, 1874–80) and his Liberal rival, William Ewart Gladstone (1809–98; prime minister, 1868–74, 1880–85, 1886, 1892–94). Gladstone whose political career spanned most of the century, served as prime minister on four separate occa- sions and traced a political pilgrimage from the right wing of the Conservatives to the left wing of the Liberals. The rivalry of Gladstone and Disraeli, who personally despised each other, gave British politics in this period an unequalled sense of drama.