Britain’s decline as a world power

Victoria’s death in 1901 coincided with the beginning of the decline in the power of the Empire. The white settler colonies had always enjoyed considerable self-government and in the first decade Canada, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand were all allowed to draw up their own constitutions to become dominions. The non-white colonies were not so fortunate: India, ‘the jewel in the Crown” of Victoria’s Empire, was subjected to an often harsh military rule, and vast areas of Africa remained firmly under British domination.

World war I

Britain was not the only European country with an empire. France, Germany, Belgium, Austria and Hungary were all imperialist powers, and other countries such as Italy also had dreams of empire. British industry no longer enjoyed the total domination of world markets that it had in the 19th century; Germany was rapidly becoming the dominant economic power in Europe.

The rivalry between the great European powers led almost inevitably to the outbreak of World War I in 1914. It was the bloodiest war in history. When it ended in 1918 in victory for the Allied Powers of Britain, France, America and Italy, more than 10 million men had been killed. In Britain, the only positive outcome of the war was that women’s contribution to the war effort had been so important that it was impossible to deny them the right to vote in the 1919 elections.

One of the strangest phenomena of World War I was the wealth of literature and poetry produced by young, upper-class officers serving in the British Army during the war. Read and study one of the most famous of these poems, written in 1914 by Rupert Brooke who died in 1915 while on active service in the Royal Naval Division.

The Soldier

1 If I should die, think only this of me:

That there’s some corner of a foreign field

That is for ever England. There shall be

In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;

5 A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,

Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,

A body of England’s, breathing English air,

Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,

10 A pulse in the eternal mind, no less

Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;

Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;

And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,

In hearts at peace, under an English heaven

Exercise 12.

l. The first four lines of the poem imagine the death and burial of the soldier. Where?

2. The next four lines recall some of the things the soldier loved about England. What are they?

3. What is the poet’s idea contained in lines 9-11 of the poem?

4. Lines 12-14 of the poem recall some more memories of England.

What are they?

The years of depression

The war was followed by a period of severe hardship throughout Europe as the depressed economies struggled to recover from the war effort in the face of the expanding American and Asian economies. It was a period of great social unrest and mistrust between the various classes. Unemployment was high, wages low and there were numerous strikes, including a General Strike in 1926 by all the unions in an unsuccessful attempt to stop the owners of the coal mines cutting miners’ wages.

The great Depression of the 1930s actually began with the collapse of the American financial markets (the Wall Street crash) in 1929. In Britain unemployment reached huge proportions: over three million people, out of a total workforce of 14 million, were out of work. The formation of a National Coalition Government, including Conservative leaders and former Labour Party leaders, proved to be no solution.

Exercise 13. List the main characteristics of the 20s and 30s in Britain.