What major events were taking place in England during the 1700's?

Question

What major events were taking place in England during the 1700's?

Answer 1

The 1700s was the era of the agricultural revolution and the start of the industrial revolution, bringing about major changes in the way people lived.  In 'Racing Pigs and Giant Marrows' Harry Pearson writes:

'In the late 1700s, 75 percent of the population lived in the countryside, but the balance was already shifting rapidly.  Prior to the upheavel, the bulk of British farming had been done by smallholders, cottagers and crofters.  It was subsistence farming, the mainstay of a peasant economy.  Most Britons had been, to a greater or lesser extent, self-sufficient when it came to food.  Now, sucked in to serve the manufacturers, living in the hastily built cities, they could no longer feed themselves. The goodnews for landowners was that these recently converted urbanites had just about enough cash to pay someone else to do it for them.  Which would have been easy enough had it not been for the fact that, amid upping sticks and heading for the dark Satanic mills and the roaring flames of the foundries,the population had somehow found the time to double itself.  for close to 10,000 years farming ahd evolved as slowly as the rest of society, now the sudden acceleration of social change demanded a swift and thorough repsonse from agriculture.  It got one.  At the forefront were a cadre of radicals who were determined to forment a farming revolution in Britain.  One of th eleading firebrands was the reigning monarch, George III.  Farmer George, as he was nicknamed, imported merino sheep to Britain from Spain, formed the Board of Agriculture and put royal land at Windsor, Kew, Mortlake and the Old Deer Park to work.

The duke of Bedord set up a model farm at Woburn and organised ploughing matches, the Earl of Egremont turned part of Petowrth House into an agricultural college, deforested his great deer park so it could be turned over to tillage and put new selective-breeding techniques to such good use at his stud farm that his horses womn the Oaks and the Derby more frequentlythan those of other breeders.  Lord Townsend took an obsessive interest in root crops, earning himself the sobriquet 'Turnip' Townsend, and Thomas Coke, Earl of Leicster, transformed the estate at Holkham Hall from one for which tenants could not be found, into one of the most productive and profitable in Britain.  A new breed of businessman farmer was emerging.

Profit and productivity now met the peasant in a battle for the countryside.  In order to boost output, thousands of Enclosure Acts, which transferred land from communal to individual ownership, were passec by Parliament.  Between 1702 and 1844 close to six million acres of land found its way into private hands.  The battle to feed the new urban population had wrought a change in rural life almost as great as that which had sparked the struggle in the first place.

Denied the common grazing on which they relied, harassed by landowners whose vast tracts of property entitled them to greater parish voting rights and who consequently controlled the distribution of newly enclosed land, the smallholders were crushed.  The option of self-employment having been withdrawn, they either moved to the towns and sought work with a manufacturer, or stayed put and took a job with the landowners who had driven them under.  A population that had once worked for itself now, in the main, worked for others.

This is one of the saddest chapters in British history, not least because it makrs an important change: it is possible to lay the blame for all human tragedies in the middle Ages and before on either "acts of God" (the Black Death, Fire of London) or the greed and general wickedness of individuals (examples too numerous to mention). The Encolsure Acts were different.  However corruptly implemented, they were a necessity; without them Britain would have faced famine and social collapse.  They are the first example of huge injustice born of economic expediency; as such, you mgith say that theys ignal the moment when the destiny of manking was handed over to the financial system.

Answer 2

american revolution

Answer 3

1700 Exports as %age of national output - 8.4%. Agriculture output (1815 prices) - £40 million.

1706 Act of Bankruptcy passed.

1707 Union of Scotland and England.

1708 English banks limited to small-scale partnerships.

1714 Accession of George I.

1717 Britain switches to Gold Standard.

1720 Note issue by Bank of England exceeds total of all goldsmith bankers Bubble Act.

1721 - 1723 South Sea Bubble Affair - unimportant in itself, the speculation involved in this Bubble is important for the long-lasting hostility it evoked towards the dealing in shares of companies.

1732 Act of Bankruptcy made permanent.

1734 Barnards Act prohibits dealings in options and forward contracts by stockbrokers on the London exchange.

1736 - 1799 125 Municipal Improvement Acts passed.

1750 Manufactures as % of exports - 75.4%. Agricultural Output (1815 prices) - £59 million.

1751 Creation of Three Percent Consols.

1752 Adoption of Gregorian Calendar.

1760 Exports as a %age GNP - 14.6%. Accession of George III.

1765 American Stamp Act (repealed 1766).

1770s Canal links between major rivers begin to be established.

1772 Over 500 turnpike trusts established - turnpikes were monopolies granted by parliament for the running of private highways.

1776 United Stated of America declares Independence.

1780 Exports as a %age GNP - 9.4%.

1780 - 1787 Number of cotton mills increases eightfold.

1783 Recognition of American Independence.

1784 East India Company establishes Board of Control.

Answer 4

The Enclosure Acts. People were driven off the land, to turn it into pasture for sheep. The same process happened with the Highland Clearances in Scotland.

Oliver Goldsmith wrote the poem "The Deserted Village" in 1770 deploring rural depopulation.

Answer 5

1707 - Act of Union - Scotland becomes part of the UK.  Jacobite rebellions follow.

1712 - Steam engine invented.

1721 - Robert Walpole becomes first PM.

1750s - Britain takes control of India.

Generally there was the Industrial revolution, the enlightenment, increased colonial power and a greater amount of democracy.