La Edad Victoriana

THE VICTORIAN AGE

Economy and society
The Victorian age took its name from Queen Victoria, whose reign (1837 – 1901) was the longest in the history of industry and international trade took overfrom the old agricultural economy. “Free trade” became the dominant economic ethos without changes in the political and social structure. Britain was the wealthiest and most powerful nation in theworld. This was the result of material exploitation of its growing number of colonies. With the revival of revolutionary activity in continental Europe, the unsettled masses of the urban poor wereperceived as a potential danger to the existing order of things and gradually over the century steps were taken to incorporate portions of the working classes into society through a series of reforms andprogressive policies.

The pressure for social reform
In the early nineteenth century there was a deep unrest among industrial and agricultural workers. Food prices were high and unemploymentwidespread. Poor people had to live in slums, segregated quarters characterised by disease and crime. They had to work hardly in exchange for a little food. Moreover poverty was considered a crime andpenalized as such. It was only towards the end of the 19th century that it was to be widely recognised as a social problem.
In the meantime the middle class demanded representation in Parliament andinsisted on parliamentary reform. Finally in 1832 the Reform Act gave the right to vote to all male householders and fairer representation to the new industrial towns. The working classes had still noright to vote. Gradually, during the second part of the century, the right to vote was extended first to town workers and then to agricultural labourers and miners. After a period of great agitation,workers organized themselves in trade unions, which, together with radical and socialist organizations, gave origin to a new political party: the Labour Party. Women, however, had to wait until 1928...