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UNIT 49 DEVELOPMENT AND ADMINISTRATION OF THE BRITISH COLONIAL EMPIRE IN THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES. CENTURI ES. JOSEPH CONRAD AND RUDYARD KIPLING. OUTLINE 1.

INTRODUCTION. 1.1. Aims of the unit. 1.2. Notes on bi bliography bliog raphy..

2.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND FOR THE DEVELOPMENT AND ADMINISTRATION OF THE BRITISH COLONIAL EMPIRE IN THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES. A

2.1. The policy of colonial expansion. 2.1.1. Imperialism vs. colonialism. 2.1.2. The two British empires. 2.2. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: centuries: the first B ritish empire. 2.2.1. Political background in Great Britain. 2.2.2. 2.2.2. The Industrial Revolution: main consequences. 2.2.2.1. The sixteenth century: main sources. 2.2.2.2. The seventeenth century: great developments. 2.2.2.3. The eighteenth eighteenth century: main conse quenc es. 2.2.3. The main British colonies. 2.2.3.1. In America: the first British colonies. 2.2.3.2. In the rest of the world. 2.3. The nineteenth century: the second British empire. 2.3.1. Political background in Great Britain. 2.3.2. Social and economic background in Great Britain. 2.3.3. 2.3.3. The nineteen th-century British colonies. 2.4. The twentieth century: the dismantling of the British empire.

3.

A LITERARY BACKGROUND: JOSEPH CONRAD AND RUDYARD KIPLING. 3.1. The Victorian literary background. 3.1.1. Drama. 3.1.2. Poetry. 3.1.3. Prose. 3.2. Joseph Conrad (1857-1924). 3.2.1. Life. 3.2.2. Style. 3.2.3. Main works. 3.3. Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936). 3.2.4. Life. 3.2.5. Style. 3.2.6. Main works.

4. 5. 6.

EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS IN LANGUAGE TEACHING. CONCLUSION. BIBLIOGRAPHY.

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1. INTRODUCTION.

1.1. Aims of the unit.

The present unit, Unit 49, 49 , aims to provide a useful introduction to the development and administration of the British colonial empire, namely in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries since it is considered to be a turning point in the history of Great Britain. We shall also deal with how this situation was reflected in the literature of the time through the writing of relevant figures such as Joseph as Joseph Conrad and Rudyard Kipling . Kipling . In general, the literature of the time was both both shaped by and reflected reflected the prevailing prevailing ideologies ideologies of the day which, which, following following Speck (1998), means that this is an account of literary activity in which social, economic, cultural and political political allegia allegiances nces are placed placed very very much much to the fore. fore.

This is reflected in the organization of the unit, which is divided into two chapters which correspond to the two main tenets of this unit: (1) a historical background of the development and administration of the British colonial empire in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and (2) the literary background of the time, namely focused on the works of J. Conrad and R. Kipling. Therefore, we shall present our study in five main chapters.

Chapter 2 2 namely provides a historical background for the development and administration of the British colonial empire empire in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In doing so, it is convenient to analyse first some conceptions related to the imperial expansion and also, the situation in Great Britain before and during the the eighteenth and nineteenth century so as to better understand the deep changes which gave way to this colonial expansion, and analyse the reasons why Great Britain was determined to take control of great areas far from the Continent.

Therefore, we shall provide a general overview of (1) the policy of the colonial expansion in general terms, where we shall analyse first the difference between the concepts (a) imperialism vs. colonialism and second, what historians call (b) the two British empires. Then, we shall trace back in time to analyse analyse (2) the seventeenth seventeenth and eighteenth eighteenth centuries and therefore, therefore, review the main reasons for the establishment of the first British empire regarding (a) the political backgrou background nd in Great Great Britain at that time; time; (b) the Industria Industriall Revolution Revolution and its consequ consequence encess on the imperial expansion in (i) the sixteenth century in terms of main sources, (ii) the seventeeth century in terms of great developments, and (iii) in the eighteenth century in terms of main consequences; and (c) the main British colonies by then, thus the British expansion (i) in America with the establishment of the first American colonies, (ii) in the rest of the world (India, Africa, Australia, etc). Next, we shall analyse how imperial expansion developed (3) in

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1. INTRODUCTION.

1.1. Aims of the unit.

The present unit, Unit 49, 49 , aims to provide a useful introduction to the development and administration of the British colonial empire, namely in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries since it is considered to be a turning point in the history of Great Britain. We shall also deal with how this situation was reflected in the literature of the time through the writing of relevant figures such as Joseph as Joseph Conrad and Rudyard Kipling . Kipling . In general, the literature of the time was both both shaped by and reflected reflected the prevailing prevailing ideologies ideologies of the day which, which, following following Speck (1998), means that this is an account of literary activity in which social, economic, cultural and political political allegia allegiances nces are placed placed very very much much to the fore. fore.

This is reflected in the organization of the unit, which is divided into two chapters which correspond to the two main tenets of this unit: (1) a historical background of the development and administration of the British colonial empire in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and (2) the literary background of the time, namely focused on the works of J. Conrad and R. Kipling. Therefore, we shall present our study in five main chapters.


Therefore, we shall provide a general overview of (1) the policy of the colonial expansion in general terms, where we shall analyse first the difference between the concepts (a) imperialism vs. colonialism and second, what historians call (b) the two British empires. Then, we shall trace back in time to analyse analyse (2) the seventeenth seventeenth and eighteenth eighteenth centuries and therefore, therefore, review the main reasons for the establishment of the first British empire regarding (a) the political backgrou background nd in Great Great Britain at that time; time; (b) the Industria Industriall Revolution Revolution and its consequ consequence encess on the imperial expansion in (i) the sixteenth century in terms of main sources, (ii) the seventeeth century in terms of great developments, and (iii) in the eighteenth century in terms of main consequences; and (c) the main British colonies by then, thus the British expansion (i) in America with the establishment of the first American colonies, (ii) in the rest of the world (India, Africa, Australia, etc). Next, we shall analyse how imperial expansion developed (3) in

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the nineteenth century regarding the development of the second British empire in terms of (a) political, political, (b) social social and economic economic background background,, and an account account of the main (c) nineteenth nineteenth-century British colonies; and finally, we shall reach (4) the twentieth century by examining the dismantling of the British empire.

for the Victorian Literature and, in particular, to Chapter 3 shall 3 shall provide a literary background for the Post-colonial or imperalist literature, namely reflected through the figures of the Victorian novelists Jose novelists Joseph ph Conrad and Rudyard Kipling . In this chapter, chapter, we shall namely deal with the nineteenth-century literature in the Victorian period, that is, from 1837 to 1901 so as to frame Conrad and Kipling’s literary works in an appropriate social and political context to make him coincide with the late consequences of the British imperialism. So, we shall start by reviewing the (1) Victorian literary background regarding the main literary forms (a) drama, (b) poetry, and (c) prose, so as to approach the novel and non-fiction works. Then, we shall provide the reader with the biographies of (2) Joseph Conrad and (3) Rudyard Kipling in terms of (i) life, (ii) style and (iii) main works.

Chapter 4 4 will be devoted to the main educational implications in language teaching regarding the introduction of this issue in the classroom setting. Chapter 5 5 will offer a conclusion to broadly broadly overview overview our present present study, study, and Chapter 6 will include all the bibliographical references used to develop this account of the Industrial Revolution.

1.2. Not 1.2. Notes es on bibli bibliogra ography phy..

An influential introduction to the historical background of the Victorian period, Imperialism and the Industrial Revolution is based on Thoorens, Panorama de las literaturas literaturas Daimon: Inglaterra y América del Norte. Norte. Gran Gran Breta Bretaña ña y Estados Unidos Unidos de América América (1969); Escudero, La Revolución Revolución Industrial (1988); Overton, Agricultural Agricultural Revolution Revolution in England: England: The Transformation of the Agrarian Economy 1500-1850 (1996); and Alexander, A History of English English Literature Literature (2000).

The literary background includes the works of Karl, A Karl, A Reader's Reader's Guide Guide to Joseph Joseph Conrad Conrad (1960); (1960); Magnusson & Goring, Cambridge Biographical Dictionary (1990);

Sullivan, Narratives of

empire: the fictions of Rudyard Kipling (1993); Azim, The colonial rise of the novel (1993); and Sanders, The Short Oxford History of English Literature (1996); Speck, Literature Literature and Society in Eighteenth-Century England: Ideology Politics and Culture (1998). Culture (1998).

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Other general sources are taken from the Encyclo Encyclopedi pedia a Encarta Encarta (1997) and The Columbia Electronic Electronic Encyclope Encyclopedia dia (2003); and two outstanding webpages www.bbc.com and www.wwnorton.com. The background for educational implications is based on the theory of communicative competence and communicative approaches to language teaching are provided by the most complete complete record of current current publicatio publications ns within within the educationa educationall framework framework is provided provided by the guidelines guidelines in B.O.E. B.O.E. (2004) (2004) for both E.S.O. E.S.O. and Bachillerato Bachillerato;; and the Council Council of Europe, Modern Languages: Languages: Learning, Learning, Teaching, Teaching, Assessment. Assessment. A Common Common Europe European an Framework Framework of reference reference (1998).

2. A

HISTORICAL

BACKGROUND

FOR

THE

DEVELOPMENT

AND

ADMINISTRATION OF THE BRITISH COLONIAL EMPIRE IN THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES.


Actually, our research traces back to the fifteenth century when, in general, the policy of colonial expansion was popular among the most popular empires of the time, and for our purposes, purposes, to the seventeenth seventeenth century under the domain of the Stuart Age up to the eighteenth century where the main causes that led to the imperial expansion are to be found in the establishment of the first British colonies in North America and the emergence of the Industrial Revolution. The nineteenth century witnessed the highest peak of imperialism and the twentieth century its final consequences and the decline of its powerful expansion.

Therefore, we shall provide a general overview of (1) the policy of the colonial expansion in general terms, where we shall analyse first the difference between the concepts (a) imperialism vs. colonialism and second, what historians call (b) the two British empires. Then, we shall trace back in time to analyse analyse (2) the seventeenth seventeenth and eighteenth centuries centuries and therefore, review the main reasons for the establishment of the first British empire regarding (a) the political backgrou background nd in Great Great Britain at that time; time; (b) the Industrial Industrial Revoluti Revolution on and its consequenc consequences es on the imperial expansion in (i) the sixteenth century in terms of main sources, (ii) the seventeeth

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century in terms of great developments, and (iii) in the eighteenth century in terms of main consequences; and (c) the main British colonies by then, thus the British expansion (i) in America with the establishment of the first American colonies, (ii) in the rest of the world (India, Africa, Australia, etc).

Next, we shall analyse how imperial expansion developed (3) in the nineteenth century regarding the development of the second British empire in terms of (a) political, (b) social and economic background, and an account of the main (c) nineteenth-century British colonies; and finally, we shall reach (4) the twentieth century by examining the dismantling of the British empire.

2.1. The policy of colonial expansion.

There is no doubt that the political, social and economic background of the seventeenth-century Great Britain established the main basis for the policy of colonial expansion in the following centuries, thus the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Yet, previous events, which trace back to the fifteenth century and take place within the field of exploration, mark the beginning of this colonial adventure on the part of the most powerful empires at that time, thus Scandinavia, Spain, Portugal, France and Great Britain.

Before British colonists reached the Atlantic Coast of North America, other non-British colonies did it much earlier. For instance, the Viking Leif Eriksson discovered North America accidentally on October 9, 1000; then nearly five hundred years later, Portugal, which was a leading country in the European exploration of the world, began charting the far shores of the Atlantic Ocean before Spain began.

Yet, in 1492, Cristobal Columbus brought this land to Europe’s attention on behalf of Spain, the main colonial power of the day, which focused its efforts on the exploitation of the gold-rich empires of southern Mexico (the Aztec) and of the Andes (the Inca). Portuguese explorers (Pedro Alvares Cabral) landed in American coasts (Porto Seguro, Brazil) on April 22, 1500, eight years later than Spain did.

Yet, after them no serious colonization efforts were made for decades, until England, France, and Spain began to claim and expand their territory in the New World. In fact, the first French attempt at colonization was in 1598 on Sable Island (southeast of present Nova Scotia ). Next,

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during the 17th century, Dutch traders established trade posts and plantations throughout the Americas. However, Dutch settling in North America was not as common as other European nations’ settlements. Many of the Dutch settlements had been abandoned or lost by the end of the century, with the exception of the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba, which remain Dutch territory until this day, and Suriname, which became independent in 1975.

Also, Denmark started a colony on St Thomas in 1671, and St John in 1718, and founded colonies in Greenland in 1721, which is now a self-governing part of the Kingdom of Denmark. During the 18th century, the Virgin Islands in the Caribbean Sea were divided into two territorial units, one English and the other Danish, which were also used as a base for pirates. Finally, other countries followed such as Russia, whose explorers discovered Alaska in 1732.

2.1.1. Imperialism vs. Colonialism.

Within this section, it is quite relevant to differenciate between the concepts ‘imperialism’ and ‘colonialism’ so as to better understand the imperial expansion of the Great Britain. Although they may look similar, they establish different concepts. For instance, whereas the term ‘imperialism’ refers to the principle, spirit, or system of empire, and is driven by ideology, the term ‘colonialism’ refers to the principle, spirit, or system of establishing colonies, which is driven by commerce. Yet, they have no clear cut limits and, often, it is difficult to say where one ends and the other begins.

2.1.2. The two British empires.

In general terms, within this policy of imperial expansion and the establishment of new colonies all over the world, historians make a distinction between two British empires which follows a temporal classification within different centuries. Thus, according to www.wwnorton.com (2004), the first British empire is to be set up in the seventeenth century, “when the European demand for sugar and tobacco led to the development of plantations on the islands of the Caribbean and in southeast North America. These colonies, and those settled by religious dissenters in northeast North America, attracted increasing numbers of British and European colonists”. Hence, “the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries saw the first British Empire expanding into areas formerly controlled by the Dutch and Spanish Empires (then in decline) and coming into conflict with French colonial aspirations in Africa, Canada, and India. With the

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Treaty of Paris in 1763, the British effectively took control of Canada and India, but the American Revolution (1776) brought their first empire to an end”. On the other hand, a further phase of territorial expansion that led to the second British Empire was initiated by the exploratory voyages of Captain James Cook to Australia and New Zealand in the 1770s. “This reached its widest point during the reign of Queen Victoria (1837–1901). At no time in the first half of her reign was empire a central preoccupation of her or her governments, but this was to change in the wake of the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871), which altered the balance of power in Europe”. During the next decades, the British empire was compared to the Roman empire because of its extension, but the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were just about to see the development in the dismantling of the British Empire with the declaration of independence of the British colonies in India (1947) and Hong Kong (1997). So, one by one, the subject peoples of the British Empire have entered a postcolonial era, in which they must reassess their national identity, their history and literature, and their relationship with the land and language of their former masters (www.wwnorton.com).

2.2. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: the first British empire.

2.2.1.

The political background in Great Britain.

The seventeenth century has its starting point in the death of Elizabeth I (1603) and the accession of James I to the crown. This period, known as the Stuart Age (1603-1713) and also called the Jacobean Era, the age of Cromwell and the Restoration, is characterized by crisis, civil wars, the Commonwealth and the Restoration, and establishes the immediate background to the Industrial Revolution and the establishment of the first Americ an colonies.

Therefore, the political background is to be framed upon the Stuart succession line, thus under the rule of James I (1603-1625). Under his rule, he achieved the unification of the crowns of England and Scotland, and brought the long war with Spain to an end. Although this greatly helped the English treasury and also James’s reputation (as rex pacificus), the policy was, in part, unpopular because peace meant that both the English and the Dutch had to acknowledge the Spanish claim to a monopoly of trade between their own South American colonies and the rest of the world.

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His son, Charles I (1625-1642), ruled until civil war broke out in 1642. He became King of Great Britain and Ireland on his father’s death from 1625 to 1642, but soon friction between the throne and Parliament began almost at once. For eleven years, Charles ruled without parliament, a period described as ‘the Eleven Years’ Tyranny’, which led to civil war and his eventual judicial execution in 1649 (called a ‘regicide’). This is the reason why we may note that in the succession line, there is an eighteen-year interval between reigns (1642-1660), called Interregnum, when first Parliament and Oliver Cromwell established themselves as rulers of England.

Next, Cromwell (1642-1660) controlled the political affairs until monarchy was restored by Charles II (1660-1685); this was followed by his brother, James II (1685-1689) who, in 1668, fled before his invading son-in-law, the Dutchman William of Orange became William III. Then William and Mary II (1689-1707) were succeeded by Mary’s sister, Queen Anne (1702-1713). Each of their contributions were crucial for the development and administration of the British empire all over the world.

These events contributed to the most influential change of the seventeenth and early eighteenth century, that of population. Whereas for the first half of the century the population continued to grow and, as a result, there was pressure on food resources, land and jobs, and increased price inflation, the late seventeenth century saw the easing, if not the disappearance of these problems. Family-planning habits started to change and new methods of farming increased dramatically. From the 1670s, England became an exporter as opposed to a net importer of grain. The seventeenth century is also probably the first in English history in which more people emigrated than immigrated, hence the period of American colonization.

Once in the early eighteenth-century, its political background is to be framed upon the Georgian succession line, thus under the rule of Queen Anne (1701-1714); her German cousin, which became George I (1714-1727); George II (1727-1760), and George III (1760-1820), king of Great Britain and Ireland (followed by his son, George IV (1820-1830), who was succeeded by his brother, William IV). This century witnessed the starting point of the British colonial empire, reaching the highest point in the following century.

As stated before, the Georgian period was one of change since the very infrastructure of Britain was changing and Britain became the world’s first modern society, not only in agricultural developments which were followed by industrial innovation, but also in urbanisation and the need for better communications. In fact, the main changes are to be noticed in agriculture, industry and commerce.

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Following the Encyclopedia Encarta (1997), “the social, economic and political situation in Great Britain was just about to change with the death of Queen Anne in 1714. Since she had no children, she was succeeded by her German cousin George, and the monarchy moved from the House of Stuart to the House of Hannover. When George came to England in 1714, the Jacobites attempted to replace him with James II’s son James Edward Stuart, or The Great Pretender, but were unsuccessful. Politically, George favored Whigs arguing that Tories were loyal to the Stuart cause. His head for foreign affairs led to the formation of the Triple Alliance”.

Eventually, “George I was succeeded by his son George II. George II’s interest concerned Hannover rather than Great Britain and during the war of the Austrian Succession, he subordinated the interests of England to those of Germany. With the advice of his wife and ministers, Britain was able to progress materially. The final years of his reign were considerably marked by the suppression of the last major Jacobite rebellion, and his prosecution of the Seven Years’ War” between England and France (Encarta, 1997). This opposition between the two countries continued and was to be present in the fight for imperial expansion all over the world.

The political field had a great effect on the policy of colonial expansion, in particular, in various regions, namely in connections between industrialization, labor unions, and movements for political and social reform in England, Western Europe, and the United States. The following factors combined dictated the making of British history in the eighteenth century. Thus,

•

Each passing of the crown introduced new ideals concerning such issues as the Church, Parliament, and foreign policy. Each monarch also had their own personality that determined how the British Common would interact with their monarch. Following George III’s accession in 1760, there was a subtle change in policy and, in 1762, peace negotiations were opened in secret. On the continent, although the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763) was extremely costly in terms of lives and finance, Britain was seen as a world power. Yet, across the ocean the only real problem by 1770 was America and the revolution that started to take place since the British government attempted to cover its losses by several acts.

•

As a result, colonial tensions increased and in 1776 an independent state came into existence since American colonies declared their independence as the United States of America. War began in 1775 and was prolonged in 1783, at the King’s insistence, to prevent copycat protests elsewhere. Nearly one century later, many labourers were wanted there after the abolition of sla very somewhat after 1833.

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•

The French revolution in 1789, opened an era of liberal revolution, which slowly established the right of every citizen to move whenever and wherever he liked. As a result, religious tolerance grew. The idea of one nationality in one country started to develop and caused nationalism. Because of this and other ideologies a new group of political refugees grew and hence, government policy had a large influence on people in Europe now.

•

Next, for much of the late eighteenth century and early 1800s, the British fleet was involved in actions against the French and Spanish in the Mediterranean, Atlantic and Caribbean under the guidance of Horatio Nelson, who secured British naval dominance in the imperial expansion.

2.2.2.

The Industrial Revolution: main consequences.

The Industrial Revolution is often located in the period between 1750 and 1850, which coincides to a great extent with the Augustean Age (1714-1790); with the Georgian Age or the age of the Romantics (1790-1837), and reaching the end of the century (1901) with the Victorian Age (1837-1900) or Realism movement. Together with this political background, the emergence of the Industrial revolution, and therefore, its consequences on society, brought about important economic, social, technological and cultural changes which framed the two phases of development of the British imperial expansion.

Generally speaking, the industrial revolution is said to have been the trigger for the imperial expansion since the new industrial economy in its earliest stages was acquired to serve a mercantile system. For a long time, the colonial market was small and unimportant, but soon, the British government desired to take the American continent and islands as a whole to serve as a market for their manufacturers and a source for products which could not be found at home. So, let us examine the effects of the industrial revolution in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in terms of main sources, development and main consequences on the imperial expansion.

2.2.2.1. The sixteenth century: main sources.

The source of this important revolution has its roots in the sixteenth century, and in particular, in the British agrarian system where the workers were the members of the same family, and the working tools were simple tools and animals. Actually, from the 16th century onwards, an

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essentially organic agriculture was gradually replaced by a farming system that depended on energy-intensive inputs. According to Overton (1996), the impact of this agraria n revolution was to be felt in the agriculture’s demand for more land and therefore, the pressure on Britain’s depleted woodlands.

Moreover, the rising price of wood as an industrial fuel made coal was an increasingly attractive option, with which Britain was plentifully supplied. When its use was extended into industry, however, England necessitated the containment of harmful fumes that contaminated the raw materials. Hence, the salt, sugar and soap industries found their technical solutions quickly, and th

in the early 17 century glass makers, and non-ferrous metal refiners modified their equipment to burn coal, but iron makers suffered repeated disappointment.

2.2.2.2. The seventeenth century: great developments.

In the seventeenth century great developments took place namely in the technological field, for instance, the invention of the steam engine which was prompted by the expanding mining sector and the development of new forms of transport, which were to mark the beginning of the industrial revolution and its development in the eighteenth century.

Also, scientific discoveries helped this development since Charles II was a patron of the arts and science. Actually, the Royal Society was founded under his royal patronage by a group of Oxford men, among whom Robert Boyle (1627-1691) demonstrated that the volume of gases varied in precisely inverse proportion to the pressure upon them. Other scientists of this century included Isaac Newton (1642-1727), who made many discoveries (including the law of gravity) and laid the foundations of physics as a modern discipline, and Edmund Halley, the Astronomer Royal, (1656-1742), hence the foundation of the Royal Observatory of Greenwich in 1675.

Yet, undoubtely, the most important step which favoured the imperial expans ion was made in the economic field: the foundation of the Bank of England in 1694. As mentioned above, the continental wars of James II (1685-1689) and William of Orange, known as William III (16891707), were really expensive, and as a result, England was forced to raise a considerable national debt. In 1694, the Scotsman William Paterson founded the Bank of England to assist the crown by managing the public debt, and eventually it became the national reserve for the British Isles. Yet, in 1697, any further joint-stock banks were forbidden just to secure its position of prominence in England.

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It was this debt that forced the British government to use the colonies as a source of economic income. In fact, the Secretary of state for the South was established in London so as to deal with colonial business. Other government departments, such as the treasury, the customs, the admiralty, and the war office also had representatives in the colonies, where the chief representative of the Imperial government was the governor, appointed by the king or by the proprietors with his approval.

The general desire in this century was for the American continent and islands serve as a source for products and as a market for their manufacturers. Till the end of this century the pressure of France expansion on almost all sides of the American colonies, except the sea, was a constant remainder to them of their ultimate dependence on England’s military support and their main aim was to develop a naval supremacy over France.

As seen above, the industrial revolution meant an increasing demand of industrial goods (textile, iron, machines, trains, ships, chemicals, houses, furniture, food, drinks, paper, etc) which needed, in turn, people to work in industries, money to build factories and produce goods, and raw materials to work with. The development of industrialisation was seen as a wide-ranging phenomenon which involved every aspect of society, both in and out of the European continent.

2.2.2.3. The eighteenth century: main consequences.

The eighteenth century was to witness the most important consequences of the industrial revolution within the British colonial expansion, both in America and overseas in combination with the political events mentioned above. In fact, the Victorian period (1837-1901) is characterized by the sense of dizzying change, in which perhaps the most important event was the shift away from a way of life based on ownership of land to a modern urban economy based on trade and manufacturing, that is, the Industrial Revolution. This shift created profound economic and social changes, including a mass migration of workers to industrial towns, where they lived in new urban centres.

However, the changes arising out of the eighteenth-century Industrial Revolution were just one subset of the radical changes taking place in mid- and late-nineteenth-century Britain, among which we may mention the democratization resulting from extension of the franchise; challenges to religious faith, in part based on the advances of scientific knowledge, particularly of evolution; and changes in the role of women.

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In fact, the essence of the industrial Revolution is said to be the substitution of competition for the medieval regulations which had previously controlled the production and distribution of wealth to the new industrial economy which favoured a mercantile system and brought about important consequences for the policy of expansion at all levels, resulting then in a wider distribution of wealth.

•

First of all, in economic terms, the sudden acceleration of technical and economic development that begun in Britain in the second half of the eighteenth century changed the lives of a large proportion of the population by the nineteenth century. Machinery and manufacturing made possible by deep innovations in technology, such as the steam engine came to dominate the traditional agrarian economy.

•

In social terms, we can talk about a demographic revolution in this period as well as migratory movements from the homeland Britain to colonial settlements. These fast changes made people move from living and working on farms to working in factories and living in cities, which had both positive and negative effects on people. The growth of population was due to the improvement of food supplies, better hygiene conditions and a reduction in the mortality rate of epidemics. People did not migrate to earn some extra money, but to make their living. They needed money to buy a piece of land, to pay their taxes and their debts.

•

The eighteenth-century technological background is namely represented by the scientific developments that took place under royal patronage of the Georgian succession line. During the course of the eighteenth century, a variety of inventions allowed for greater mechanisation to be applied to the industry and this led in turn to the industrial structure changing to a factory-based system. These inventions were the basis for the increased productivity of the textile industry throughout Britain and this century was to witness the beginnings of an industrial revolution in Britain which was to change the world from 1750 on. Since new technologies were applied to the production of goods and services, there was a change from hand-made work to manufactures, which is a prominent fact regarding the substitution of the factory for the domestic system. As a result, we find changes in the use of basic materials (iron, steel); the use of new energy sources to produce power (coal, steam engines, electricity, petroleum, combustion engines); the mechanical discoveries of the time, which altered the character of the cotton manufacture (i.e. the spinning-jenny, the waterframe, the mule, the self-acting mule, and the power-loom); and important developments in transport and communication means (steam locomotive, steamship, cars, aeroplane, telegraph, radio).

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Therefore, this new production system was extended, in turn, to particular areas in Britain and hence, to national and international markets. Also, work productivity increased at a high rate, giving way to a new organization of work known as the ‘factory system’, and hence, world trade and politics became more influential in the every-day life of the villagers, and as a result, the group of proletarians grew quickly due to downwards social mobility and the fact that proletarians had more children than farmers. •

Finally, the most relevant event has to do with the period of overseas exploration and the name of James Cook, who initiated the exploratory voyages in the Pacific to Australia and New Zealand in the 1770s. It is important to remember that, as stated above, his voyages were included in the further phase of territorial expansion known as the second British Empire.

2.2.3.

The main British colonies.

2.2.3.1. In America: the first British colonies.

In North America the establishment of American colonies meant the starting point of British colonial activity in the Western hemisphere and also, a new place for immigrants to hide from political and religious crisis in England. The political history of Colonial America will make us comprehend the preparation of the whole people for the radical change of government they were so soon to undergo in British colonies, and the strong spirit of democracy which led Britain to the loss of the American colonies with the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

We distinguish two types of earlier colonies: non-British and British; whereas the first group namely includes Viking, Portuguese, Spanish, French, Dutch and Danish colonists, the second group is formed by Anglosaxons. Moreover, non-British colonies, namely French and Dutch, were founded on aristocratic principles and strove vigorously to gain liberal institutions. Following Daimon (1969), had their political circumstances been different in Europe, they could have also gained the control of the continent. Yet, Holland was quite wealthy and had few immigrants, and France had a great number of immigrants but was not interested in the snow land. Yet, the struggle for control of this land would continue for more than a hundred years.

The thirteen British colonies of America were formed under a variety of differing conditions. The settlement of Virginia was the work of a company of London merchants, that of New England of a body of Puritan refugees from persecution. Most of the other colonies were formed through the efforts of proprietors, to whom the king had made large grants of territory. None of

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them were of royal or parliamentary establishment and therefore, the government of the mothercountry took no part in the original formation of the government of the colonies, except in the somewhat flexible requirements of the charters granted to the proprietors.

The colonies were classified into (1) New England colonies, made up by Rhode, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Among them, the most famous first colonies were Plymouth colony (1620) and Massachusetts Bay Colony (1629), which were settled by two groups of of religious dissenters who escaped religious persecution in England: the Pilgrims and the Puritans; (2) the rest of British colonies in America followed after Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay, consisting of Middle colonies, such as New York, Pennsylvania, the three counites of Delaware, and Maryland, which were namely characterized by a wide diversity, both religious, political, economic, and ethnic; (3) the southern colonies include Maryland, Virginia, Georgia and the two Carolinas (north and south). Yet, the most important to mention is Virgina colony, which is considered to be the first permanent settlement in North America under the name of the English colony of Jamestown (1607), was the first English colony in America to survive and become permanent and become la ter the capital of Virginia and the site of the House of Burgesses.

The settlement was struck by severe droughts in centuries and as a result, only a third of the colonists furvived the first winter, and even, source documents indicate that some turned to cannibalism. Yet, the colony survived in large part to the efforts of John Smith, whose moto was ‘No work, no food’. He put the colonists to work, and befriended Pocahontas, daughter of Chief Powhatan, who supplied the colony with food.

But the main causes of social decentralization were soon to be noticed. As the colony of Virginia was so heavily influenced by the cultivation of tobacco and the ownership of slaves, in 1619 large numbers of Africans were brought to this colony into the slave trade. Thus, individual workers on the plantation fields were usually without family and separated from their nearest neighbors by miles. This meant that little social infrastructure developed for the commoners of Virigina society, in contrast with the highly developed social infrastructure of colonial New England.

By this time, the English colonies were thirteen: Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. Although all these British colonies were strikingly different, throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries several events took place and brought relevant changes in the colonies: whereas some of the them sprung from their common

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roots as part of the British Empire, others led up to the American Revolution, and to the final separation from England.

Although there was general properity in the Middle and Southern colonies, as well as social and political struggle, they had to face the arrival of loads of immigrants from Europe. Their economy, based on the production of rice, indigo and naval stores, was booming in contrast to the hostile attitude of Indians at the frontier. In the upper south, Virginia and Maryland’s tobacco prices were falling and crop failures became very usual. Yet, in New England, the social and political atmosphere was quite calm, but not the economy since the Sugar Act imposed taxes and new commercial regulations on them. The main causes which led the thirteen colonies to revolution are stated as follows. •

The first event relates to the French and Indian War (1754-1763), which meant the American extension of the general European conflict known as the Seven Years’ War. The war takes its name from the Iroquois confederacy, which had been playing the British and the French against each other successfully for decades. Eventually, in the Treaty of Paris (1763) , France surrendered its vast North American empire to Britain. During the war the thirteen colonies’s identity as part of the British Empire was made truly apparent, as British military and civilian officials took on an increased presence in the lives of Americans. The war also increased a sense of American unity in men who might normally have never left their colonies to travel across the continent, and fighting alongside men from decidedly different. However, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom at the time (William Pitt), decided to wage the war in the colonies with the use of troops from the colonies and tax funds from Britain itself, which was a successful wartime strategy. Yet, this dispute was to set off the chain of events that brought about the American Revolution.

•

The Royal Proclamation (1763) was a prohibition against settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains, on land which had been recently captured from France. In issuing this decree, the government was no doubt influenced by disgruntled taxpayers who did not wish to bankroll the subjugation of the native people of the area to make room for colonists. Yet, for most Americans, it seemed unnecessary to accept an unproductive piece of legislation stated by a far-away government that cared little for their needs, although Parliament had generally been preoccupied with affairs in Europe, and let the colonies govern themselves. The policy change would continue to arouse

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opposition in the colonies over the next thirteen years and through a series of measures, which were to be named as acts. •

Thus, the Sugar Act (1764), which increased taxes on sugar, coffee, indigo, and certain kinds of wine, and it banned importation of rum and French wines; the Stamp Act (1765-1766), which was carried out by the British Parliament to tax activities in their American colonies; as a result, the British Parliament passed at least two laws, known as the Quartering Act. The first one became law on 24 March 1765, and provided that Britain would house its soldiers in America first in barracks and public houses, and the second (also called the Intolerable Acts, the Punitive Acts or the Coercive Acts) was one of the measures that were designed to secure Britain’s jurisdiction over her American dominions; the Declaratory Act (1766) was established to secure the dependency of his Majesty’s dominions in America upon the crown and parliament of Great Britain. This act states that American colonies and plantations are subordinated to, and dependent upon the imperial crown and parliament of Great Britain; and that the King’ majesty as full power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the colonies and people of America, subjects of the crown of Great Britain. The Townshend Revenue Act (1767) placed new taxes on glass, lead, paints, paper, and tea. Therefore, colonial reaction to these taxes was the same as to the Sugar Act and Stamp Act, and Britain eventually repealed all the taxes except the one on tea. In response to the sometimes violent protests by the American colonists, Great Britain sent more troops to the colonies; the Tea Act (1773) gave a monopoly on tea sales to the East India Company. Since the East Indian Company wasn’t doing so well, the British wanted to give it some more business. The price on this East India tea was lowered so much that it was way below tea from other suppliers. But the American colonists saw this law as yet another means of “taxation without representation” because it meant that they could not buy tea from anyone else (including other colonial merchants) without spending a lot more money. Their response was to refuse to unload the tea from the ships in Boston, a situation that led to the Boston Tea Party in 1773. Angry and frustrated at a new tax on tea, American colonists (calling themselves the Sons of Liberty and disguised as Mohawk Native Americans) boarded three British ships (the Dartmouth , the Eleanor , and the Beaver ) and dumped 342 whole crates of British tea into Boston harbor on December 16, 1773. Similar incidents occurred in Maryland, New York, and New Jersey in the next few months, and tea was eventually boycotted throughout the colonies. The Boston

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Tea Party was an amusing and symbolic episode in American history, an example of how far Americans were willing to go to speak out for their freedom. As a result, this amusing and symbolic episode in the American Colonies of Boston and Massachusetts was defined as Intolerable Acts (also called the Coercive Acts or Punitive Acts) by the English. The Coercive Acts were a series of laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774 in response for the growing unrest of the colonies which included: the Quartering Act, the Quebec Act, Massachusetts Government Act, the Administration of Justice Act, and the Boston Port Act. The punitive effect of these laws generated a reaction in a great and growing sympathy for the colonists of Massachusetts, encouraging the neighbouring colonies to band to together which would help lead to the American Revolutionary War. Eventually, in 1775, under George III’s reign, the British North American colonies revolted in Massachusetts due to the previous frustration with the British crown practices, and namely to their opposition to British economic explotiation and also their unwillingness to pay for a standing army. Anti-monarchist sentiment was strong, as the colonists wanted to participate in the politics affecting them.

The next year, representatives of thirteen of the British colonies in North America met in Philadelphia and declared their independence in a remarkable document, the Declaration of Independence. The committee had intrusted that task to Thomas Jefferson, who, though at that time only thirty-three years of age, was chosen for two main reasons: first, because he was held to possess a singular felicity in the expression of popular ideas and, second, because he represented the province of Virginia, the oldest of the Anglo-American colonies.

Jefferson, having produced the required document, reported it to the House on the 28th of June, where it was read, and ordered to lie on the table. After the conclusion of the debate on the resolution of independence on 2nd July, the Declaration was passed under review. During the remainder of that day and the two next, this remarkable production was very closely considered and shifted, and several alterations were made in it, namely the omission of those sentences which reflected upon the English people, and the striking out of a clause which severely reprobated the slave-trade.

The debate on the proposed Declaration came to a termination two days later, on the evening of the 4th of July. The document was then reported by the committee, agreed to by the House, and signed by every member present, except General Dickinson. The signature of New York was

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not given till several days later, and a New Hampshire member, Matthew Thornton, was permitted to append his signature on November 4 (four months after the signing). With the help of their French allies they were eventually able to win the American Revolutionary War against Great Britain, settled by the Treaty of Paris (1783). So, we can say that the United States of America was founded in 1776 from British colonies along the Atlantic Coast of North America and was declared to be independent in 1778.

2.2.3.2. In the rest of the world.

Actually, interests in the wider world expanded through the eighteenth century to such extent th

that in the early years of the 18 century the East India Company proves successful regarding commercial interchanges in India and, in fact, a statutory monopoly of trade was established between England and India (1708). The number and importance of factories made the English Company have the control on the area (it had three presidencies at Bombay, Calcutta and Madras) although Bombay was the only absolute possession in French or English hands. Despite the fact that it was not a pure trading company, it found no rivalry from other European states in India since the Portuguese and Dutch, which had established their position in India, left with few and unimportant possessions or factories.

Overseas, during the earlier half of the century the British empire established more successful trading companies not only in the West Indies but also in Africa (the Royal African Company) and in the South Sea (the South Sea Company). On the American Continent, the Caribbean islands not only provided Britain with sugar and slave trade but also with strategic possessions, which was a crucial issue in the fight between England and France for colonial possessions. In fact, as stated above, the British government established the Navigation Act (1773) so as to monopolize the trade of its products (namely tobacco and sugar) and therefore, establish a close economic system and guarantee a sheltered market in Britain, not subject to competition from other colonies, such as those of France, Portugal and Spain.

In the second half of the century, some remaining British colonies were lost temporarily after the treatise, for instance, the Caribbean islands were controlled by France and Tobago and Minorca were no longer British. However, the rest of colonies were not economically strong enough to think of independence even if they had wanted it, as it was the case of South Africa, which was a military and trading port, a naval station and a port of call. Canada was of greater economic importance in the sense that its citizens were free to manage their local affairs, so the demand for self-government did not imply a wish for separation. The colonies were therefore asking for something like municipal independence.

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In 1768, the first British empire reached the second phase of expansion with the exploratory voyages of James Cook, who undertook the first of three voyages to the Pacific, surveying New Zealand, modern Australia, Tahiti and Hawaii. His second voyage (1773) made him the first Britain to reach Antarctica, and his third voyage (1778-1779) led him to discover and name island groups in the South Pacific, such as the Sandwich Islands. Unfortunately, Cook was killed on Hawai on 14 February 1779.

Eventually, the colonisation of the Antipodes, that is, Australia and New Zealand took place as an attempt to find a place for penal settlement after the loss of the original American colonies. The first shipload of British convicts landed in this largely unexplored continent in 1788, on the site of the future city of Sydney. Most convicts were young men who had only committed petty crimes. In the nineteenth century (1819) new settlers were allowed to set up in New South Wales and by 1858 transportation of convicts was abolished.

2.3. The nineteenth century: the second British empire.

Following the information given in www.wwnorton.com, “During the next decades, two great statesmen brought the issue of imperialism to the top of the nation’s political agenda: the flamboyant Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881), who had a romantic vision of empire that the sterner William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) distrusted and rejected. Disraeli’s expansionist vision prevailed and was transmitted by newspapers and novels to a reading public dramatically expanded by the Education Act of 1870. Symbolically, the British Empire reached its highest point on June 22, 1897, the occasion of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, which the British celebrated as a festival of empire. It was a 1

great moment where the British Empire was compared to the Roman Empire , comparison which was endlessly invoked in further discussions and literary works, for instance, at the start of Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness (1902) and in Thomas Hardy’s Poems of Past and Present (1901). In 1897 the Empire seemed invincible, but only two years later British confidence was shaken by the news of defeats at Magersfontein and Spion Kop in the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902). 1

“The Roman Empire, at its height, comprised perhaps 120 million people in an area of 2.5 million square miles. The British Empire, in 1897, comprised some 372 million people in 11 million square miles. An interesting aspect of the analogy is that the Roman Empire was long held - by the descendants of the defeated and oppressed peoples of the British Isles - to be generally a good thing. Children in the United Kingdom are still taught that the Roman legions brought laws and roads, civilization rather than

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Those and other battles were lost, but eventually the war was won, and it took two world wars to bring the British Empire to its end. Those wars also were won, with the loyal help of troops from the overseas empire”.

2.3.1. Political background.

The political background is namely represented by the accession of Queen Victoria to the throne when her uncle, William IV dies in 1837. So Victoria would reign from 1837 to 1901 and would be the longest reigning British monarch. In general terms, during Victoria’s reign, the revolution in industrial practices continued to change British life, bringing about urbanisation, a good communications network and wealth. In addition, Britain became a champion of Free Trade across her massive Empire, and industrialisation and trade were glorified in the Great Exhibitions. Yet, by the turn of the century, Britain’s empire was being challenged successfully by other nations such as France and Germany on the continent. We consider worth reviewing the main political benchmarks under her rule since important changes took place in her colonies. Thus:

•

In 1846 the Corn Law Act was passed again (since it was set up in 1815 already as a measure to protect the economic interests of landowners after the Napoleonic Wars). Yet, this kept the price of not only corn but also bread artificially high. Although an Anti-Corn Law League formed to oppose the legislation, it was not until the potato famine in Ireland that repeal was enacted in a belated attempt to alleviate some of the suffering. The repeal marked an end to protectionist policies and can be seen as a major stepping stone in turning Britain into a free trading nation.

•

From the 1850s, Britain was the leading industrial power in the world. Superseding the early dominance of textiles, railway, construction, iron- and steel-working soon gave new impetus to the British economy by expanding territories in Africa (namely railways).

•

Yet, the most outstanding event after 1837 was the Great Exhibition in 1851, in which the British empire was compared to the Roman empire. It was an imperial and industrial celebration which was held in Hyde Park in London in the specially constructed Crystal Palace, whose profits allowed for the foundation of public works such as the Albert Hall, the Science Museum, the National History Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

oppression, and in the second half of the nineteenth century, that was the precedent invoked to sanction

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•

Other important events were the Crimean War between 1854 and 1856, which at first was between Russia and the Ottoman Empire, and later Britain and France were involved. During this war Britain maintained their colonial possessions.

•

In 1855, Parliament launched the Limited Liabilities Act, by means of which companies were allowed to limit the liability of their individual investors to the value of their shares. As a result of the act the risk is credited with being the basis for the increased investment in trade and industry, although most of the evidence for this is apocryphal.

•

Between 1857 and 1858, there was an Indian Mutiny between Indian soldiers (Hindu and Muslim) who opposed their British commanders following a series of insensitive military demands which disrespected traditional beliefs. The mutiny led to the end of East India Company rule in India and its replacement by direct British governmental rule.

•

In May 1868, thirty-four union representatives from the north and midlands of England met in Manchester for the first Trades Union Congress. At their second annual meeting a year later, also in Manchester, forty representatives attended - speaking for over a quarter of a million workers.

•

The Third Reform Act took place in 1884 and extended the 1867 concessions from the boroughs to the countryside. Another act a year later redistributed constituencies, giving more representation to urban areas, particularly in London.

•

In 1893, Keir Hardie founded an Independent Labour Party with the intention of gaining the election of members of the working class to parliament. The Labour Party replaced the Liberal Party as the main party of opposition to the Conservatives over the following decade.

•

Following the death of Albert (Victoria’s husband) in 1861, she had increasingly withdrawn from national affairs and criticism of the Queen lessened and she resumed her interest in constitutional and imperial affairs (she was created Empress of India in 1877).

•

Victoria’s death in January 1901 was an occasion of national mourning.

•

Finally, to close the century we find the Boer War (1899-1902) which started as Britain attempted to annex the Transvaal Republic in southern Africa. In December 1880, the Boers of the Transvaal revolted against British rule, defeated an imperial force and forced the British government to recognise their independence. Finally, the peace of Vereeniging in May 1902 annexed the Boer Republics of Transvaal and the Orange Free State to the British Empire (which, in 1910, became part of the Union of South Africa).

the Pax Britannica” (www.wwnorton.com).

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2.3.2. Social and economic background.

The effect of the industrial revolution was also felt in the nineteenth-century Great Britain at social and economic level, namely in connections between industrialization, labor unions, and movements for social reform in England, Western Europe, and the United States. Also, it is namely noticed in the pace and extent of industrialization in Great Britain and the United States in the latter half of the 19th century, and the main changes brought about by the Great Reform bill of 1832. The main economic events (which coincide namely with the political ones) are as follows: •

the passage of the Catholic Emancipation Act (1820).

•

the legalisation of the first Trade Unions (1824), a movement favoured by workers joined together to protect themselves against powerful capitalist employers and ask for fair wages and reasonable conditions.

•

the passage of the first Reform Bill (1832), which was secured by William IV, who agreed to create new peers to overcome the hostile majority in the House of Lords and to make Parliament a more democratic body. The Reform Act, also known as the ‘Representation of the People Act’, aimed to extend the voting rights and redistribute Parliamentary seats, and therefore, more equitable basis in the counties.

•

Up to 1836, there was a period of greater political confidence which led to an increasing activity in the trade-unions. It must be borne in mind that the Industrial Revolution was based on the economic doctrine of Free Trade which means that the government should not interfere in the natural processes of trade and industry. This uncontrolled capitalism led to vast social differences.

Actually, up to 1837 the main political consequences on social events are closely connected to this move from the country to the towns and the division of labour in the industry market. Thus, the most outstanding consequences are listed as follows: •

the emancipation of slaves in British colonies (1833);

•

the organization of work, commonly known as the division of labour, in the industry market, brought about several changes: a specialization of work with the aim of speeding mass production; hence, we find the term ‘working classes’, which is divided in turn depending on the salary the employee obtained (high-paid, regular, casual, lowest, etc) and the kind of job they carried out. From the negotiation of workers’s salary, trade unions were established to achieve better wages and conditions of work.

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These unions (also called Friendly Societies) make us aware of the wide variety of organizations created by working-class peoples in England. Finally, in economic terms, between 1815 and 1914, another industrial revolution took place. The industries in the cities eventually won the competition with the rural industries. Because of the industrial revolution that took place, urbanisation started in the 19th century. Cities still needed many new people every now and again because of bad sanitary conditions and diseases. We may find several types of cities: cities with textile industry, cities with heavy industry and administrative or commercial cities. Meanwhile, in terms of industrial development, the iron industry had been equally revolutionised by the invention of smelting by pit-coal brought into use between 1740 and 1750, and by the application in 1788 of the steam-engine to blast furnaces. In the eight years which followed this later date, the amount of iron manufactured nearly doubled itself.

In addition, the industrial revolution also effected transportation and hence, trade. In the nineteeth century bicycles, steamships and trains made it easier for people to move further away. In the twentieth century, the explosion motor further accelerated this process. An evergrowing part of world population became subdued to market economy. A further growth of the factory system took place independent of machinery, and owed its origin to the expansion of trade, an expansion which was itself due to the great advance made at this time in the means of communication, for instance, between 1818 and 1829 more than a thousand additional miles of turnpike road were constructed; and the next year, 1830, saw the opening of the first railroad.

These improved means of communication caused an extraordinary increase in commerce, and to secure a sufficient supply of goods it became the interest of the merchants to collect weavers around them in great numbers, to get looms together in a workshop, and to give out the warp themselves to the workpeople. To these latter this system meant a change from independence to dependence; at the beginning of the century the report of a committee asserts the essential role of commerce and communication in the expansion of the Industrial Revolution all over Europe and the rest of the world.

In the late 19th century, similar revolutionary transformations occurred in other European nations, such as France (1790-1800 to 1860-1870), Germany (1830-40 to 1870-80), Belgium (1820-30 to 1870-80) and the United States (1830-40 to 1870-80). Hence, the fight between France, Germany and England in the construction of railways through the African continent with the aim of controlling the largest part of the territory.

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2.3.3.The nineteenth-century British colonies.

Generally speaking, the nineteenth century development and administration of British colonies was focused on the consolidation of existing colonies and the expansion into new areas, especially in Africa, India and Canada. Actually, in the early nineteenth century new British colonies were to be acquired or strengthened because of their strategic value, thus Malaca and Singapore because of their trading ports of growing importance, and the settlements of Alberta, Manitobba, and the British Columbia in Canada as potential areas of British migration. The main causes for other new acquisitions were, among others, the Treaty of Amiens (1802) by adding Trinidad and Ceylon; the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815) with the addition of the Cape of Good Hope; the War with the United States (1812) brought about the Canadian unity; and the first Treaty of Paris (1814) gained Tobago, Mauritius, St. Lucia and Malta.

Also, between the years 1857 and 1858 Britain acquired in India the cities of Agra, Bengal and Assam after some local wars against French influence. Perhaps the Napoleonic Wars brought about more new acquisitions to the British empire in this century than any other war, since the Crimean War (1854-1856), the pacification programs in Africa, and some conflicts in New Zealand (against the Maoris) made little or no difference to the British empire. Yet, the most serious conflict was just about to come towards the end of the century with the War in Sudan (1884) and the Boer War (1881, 1899-1902). So, as we can see, still in the nineteenth century, Great Britain maintained her political and imperial sovereignty.

In order to control these colonies, the British government created a sophisticated system for colonial administration: the Colonial Office and Board of Trade (1895-1900). Already in the 1850s, they were ruled by legislative bodies, since the colonies continuously asked for independence. They were separate departments with an increasing staff and a continuing policy of establishing discipline and pressure on the colonial goverments. Hence most colonial governements were left to themselves.

However, these legislative bodies governing the new settlements were soon to be replaced by an executive body which took over the financial control. This elected assembly would be represented by the figure of the governor and would be responsible for the colonial government. Therefore, these settlements became ‘crown colonies’, and were subject to direct rule, as we can see in the African and Pacific expansion where the crown colony system was established. Let us examine how this new colonial governing body was applied in the colonies of Australia, Asia and Africa.

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•

In the Antipodes, New Zealand and Oceania were systematically colonized in the 1840s under the pressure of British missionaries. Yet, territorial disputes were brought up between the new colonists and the homeland tribes, the Maoris. Hence the Maori Wars (1840s-1860s) which eventually ended with the withdrawal of British troops and a peaceful agreement of settlement for the newcomers. In the last quarter of the century, the British empire took the control over other islands in the Pacific, again because of missionary pressure and international naval rivalry and, eventually, the Fiji Island was annexed in 1874. Three years later the governement established a British High Commission for the Western Pacific Islands (1877) as well as a protectorate in Papua (1884) and in Tonga (1900). These protectorates were soon to be governed by Australia and New Zealand.

•

In Asia, India was conquered and therefore, had an expansion policy. As stated previously, the suppressed Indian ‘mutiny’ (1857) gave way to the abolishment of the East India Company (1858) and, therefore, the local executive body was replaced by that of the crown. Known as ‘the brightest jewel in the British crown’ (a Disraeli’s phrase), India was a strategic settlement for the British empire and her conquest was justified in terms of benefits and discipline. Further acquisitions (Burma, Punjab, Baluchistan) provided new crucial settlements in the area in order to set up a new route in India. Since the opening of the Suez Canal, new territories were under the influence of Britain within this route: Aden, Somaliland, territories in southern Arabia and the Persian Gulf. Moreover, further expansion took place with the development of the Straits settlements and the federated Malay states; Borneo (1880s), Hong Kong (1841); and adjacent territories in China, Shangai (1860, 1896), which had trading purposes.

•

Finally, the greatest development of the British Empire took place in Africa in the last quarter of the century. The reign of Queen Victoria brought about a great enthusiasm for a ‘similar Roman empire’, whose power might extend from the Cape of Good Hope to El Cairo. This idea fascinated the British citizens who, in Queen Victoria’s two jubilees, offered colonial conferences, the search of new areas of opportunity, and the discoveries and wars for mining wealth in South Africa. In fact, the spread of the British empire comprised by the nineteenth century nearly a quarter of the land surface and more than a quarter of the population of the world.

From 1882 onwards Britain controlled Egypt and Alexandria (by force), and a joint administration half British-half Egyptian was established in the Sudan area in 1899. Also, on the western coast the Royal Niger Company began the expansion over the area

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of Nigeria. By then there were two main British Companies: the Imperial British East Africa Company, which operated in nowadays Kenya and Uganda, and the British South Africa Company in the areas now called Rhodesia, Zambia, and Malawi. Hence the missionary migrations to Afric a in the eventual transfer of these territories to the crown.

2.4. The twentieth century: the dismantling of the British empire.

Therefore, by 1897 the Empire seemed invincible, but only two years later British confidence was shaken by the news of defeats at Magersfontein and Spion Kop in the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902). Hence, after the Boer War (1902), the countries of the overseas empire wanted a greater measure of self-government, and those and other battles were lost. Yet, eventually the war was won, and it took two world wars to bring the British Empire to its end. Those wars also were won, with the loyal help of troops from the overseas empire (more than 200,000 of whom were killed in World War I alone)”. After a century of almost unchallenged political security, Britain perceived the aggressive militarisation of the new German state and Hitler’s empire as a threat. Britain and, therefore, her empire, lost a large part of a generation of young men in the First World War. Yet, after the First World War the British Empire continued to grow and, in addition to the self-governing territories of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, it annexed large tracts of Africa, Asia and parts of the Caribbean. Also, following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, Britain included Iraq and Palestine. Soon nationalist movements were to be strongly felt in India, Egypt and in the Arab mandated territories. In 1922 Egypt was granted a degree of independence by Britain and full independence in 1936. Similarly, Iraq gained full independence in 1932. On the other hand, India achieved its independence in 1947 after the movement of Indian nationalism, boosted by the 1919 Amritsar Massacre. In 1931, the British Parliament, by means of the Statue of Westminster, recognized the legislative independence and equal status under the Crown of its former dominions and the Irish Free State within a British Commonwealth of Nations. The resultant relationship is sometimes thought to have been a precursor to the post-war British Commonwealth. During the Second World War, Britain’s civilian population found themselves under severe domestic restrictions, and occasionally bombing. Also, conflict accelerated many social and political developments and growing nationalist movements impacted both on the British rule of

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Empire and on the individual nations of the British Isles. Hence, most of the remaining imperial possessions were granted independence, for instance, fifty years after Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, India was cut in two to become the Commonwealth countries of India and Pakistan. The most recent development in the dismantling of the British Empire was the restoration to Chinese rule, under a declaration signed in 1984, of the former British crown colony of Hong Kong, on the southeastern coast of China, where the Union Jack was finally and symbolically lowered on July 1, 1997. So, one by one, the subject peoples of the British Empire have entered a postcolonial era, in which they must reassess their national identity, their history and literature, and their relationship with the land and language of their former masters.

3. A LITERARY BACKGROUND: JOSEPH CONRAD AND RUDYARD KIPLING.

With this historical background in mind, Chapter 3 shall provide a literary background for the Victorian Literature and, in particular, to the Post-colonial or imperalist literature, namely reflected through the figures of the Victorian novelists Joseph Conrad and Rudyard Kipling . In this chapter, we shall namely deal with the nineteenth-century literature in the Victorian period, that is, from 1837 to 1901 so as to frame Conrad and Kipling’s literary works in an appropriate social and political context to make him coincide with the late consequences of the British imperialism. So, we shall start by reviewing the (1) Victorian literary background regarding the main literary forms (a) drama, (b) poetry, and (c) prose, so as to approach the novel and nonfiction works. Then, we shall provide the reader with the biographies of (2) Joseph Conrad and (3) Rudyard Kipling in terms of (i) life, (ii) style and (iii) main works.

3.1. The Victorian literary background.

The Victorian Age includes, as stated before, several changes different in nature and, in this respect, the literary background presents a great variety of aspects. Thus, the literary period is characterized by its morality, which to a great extent is a natural revolt against the grossness of the earlier Regency, the influence of the Victorian Court and the enthusiasm for the great British empire under Victorian rule. In addition, literary productions are affected by all these events, namely in science, religion, and politics.

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Also, the new education acts of the period made education compulsory, which rapidly produced an enormous reading public. Actually, the cheapening of printing and paper increased the demand for books among which the most popular form was the novel. Finally, we also observe a strong literary interaction between American and European writers (specially in political and philosopical writings). In Britain, the influence of the great German writers was continuous (Carlyle, Arnold).

The Victorian literature is characterized by the telling of every detail, as in photography so as to get a real image of the object or person described. The fact may suggest concepts of clarity, precision, and certainty. On the contrary, the disadvantages of being close to the object, and of possessing masses of information about it is the production of copious works. So we notice that this aspect of clarity is reflected in the main literary productions of the period, which are namely divided into three groups: political, philosophical and social so as to reflect the events of the time. But before examining prose in this aspect, let us briefly examine first the other two literary forms: poetry and drama.

3.1.1. Drama.

Following Albert (1990), “from the dramatic point of view the first half of the nineteenth century was almost completely barren” since the professional theatre of the period was in a low state and the greater part of the dramatists work never saw the stage. “The popular pieces of the day were melodrama, farces and sentimental comedies, which had no literary qualities whatever, were poor in dialogue and negligible in characterization, and relied for their success upon sensation, rapid action, and spectacle”.

Among the most prominent dramatists of the period we may mention George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), whose first works were received with hostility, and the need to create his own audience led him to publish som of them before they were produced. Some of his works were Widower’s Houses (1892), Pleasant and Unpleasant (1898) and The Philanderer (1893:1905); John Millington Synge (1871-1909), who was the greatest dramatist in the rebirth of the Irish Theatre and had a unique style since his plays were written in prose, by had the rhythms and cadences of poetry. Thus, The Shadow of the Glen (1903) and The Tink er’s Wedding (1907); other lesser dramatist are Henry Arthur Jones (1851-1929), Sir Arthur Wing Pinero (18551934), and John Galsworthy (1867-1933).

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3.1.2. Poetry.

The Victorian Age produced literary works of a high quality, but, except in the novel, the amount of actual innovation is by no means great since there were many attempts at purely narrative poetry. Despite the efforts to revive the epic, the impulse was not sufficiently strong. In the early nineteenth century we may higlight some preeminent poets of the Victorian Age, such as: •

Alfred, Lord Tennyson whose poetry, although romantic in subject matter, was tempered by personal melancholy; in its mixture of social certitude and religious doubt it reflected the age.

•

The poetry of Robert Browning and his wife, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who was immensely popular, though Elizabeth’s was more venerated during their lifetimes. Browning is best remembered for his superb dramatic monologues.

•

Rudyard Kipling was the poet of the triumphant empire, who would capture the quality of the life of the soldiers of British expansion, and would reflect the Indian atmosphere. He also wrote in prose, among which his most popular work was The Jungle Book (1984).

•

In the middle of the 19th century we find the so-called Pre-Raphaelites who, led by the painter-poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti, sought to revive what they judged to be the simple, natural values and techniques of medieval life and art.

•

Other Victorian figures, such as A. E. Housman and Thomas Hardy, who lived on into the 20th century, shared a pessimistic view in their poetry.

•

Yet, the great innovator among the late Victorian poets was the Jesuit priest Gerard Manley Hopkins, whose concentration and originality of imagery had a profound effect on the twentieth-century poetry.

•

In the last decade of the century, we find the so-called decadents, who pointed out the hypocrisies in Victorian values and institutions. among them in both notoriety and talent. Among them, we find the notorious fig ure of Oscar Wilde.

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3.1.3. Prose: the novel.

There is no doubt that the Victorian era was the great age of the English novel, namely realistic, thickly plotted, crowded with characters, and long.. By the end of the period, the novel was considered not only the premier form of entertainment but also a primary means of analyzing and offering solutions to social and political problems. This king style is presented with a political, philosophical or social overtone (Thackeray, Dickens, Brontë) since was the ideal form to describe contemporary life and to entertain the middle class.

Another variety of prose is the short story (namely developed in the next century); the essays, in the treatise-style (Carlyle, Symonds, Pater); the lecture, which became prominent both in England and in America; historical novel, strongly represented by William Stubbs, Edward A. Freeman and Samuel R. Gardiner; and finally, we find the scientific treatise so as to account of the scientific developments of the period (Browne, Burton, Berkeley).

•

Political writing reflects the political consequences of the industrial revolution in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Britain. Therefore, writers such as Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881), Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873), Anthony Trollope (1815-1882), who was famous for sequences of related novels that explore social, ecclesiastical, and political life in England, and Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) among others, show, denunciate and value the moral and political affairs which deeply affected society in Britain at that period. Thus, some of their works are respectively, Coningsby: or the New Generation (1844), Sybil: or The Two Nations (1845), dealing with the politics of his day; Richelieu, or the Conspiracy (1839), A Strange Story (1862) and The Coming Race (1871); Phineas Finn (1869) and Phineas Redux (1874), where Trollope makes a satire of the political period; and finally, Carlyle’s The French Revolution (1837) and Oliver Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches (1845), in an attempt to criticize Cromwells’ methods.

•

Philosophical writing is represented by George Eliot (1819-1880), who is actually a woman writing under a pen-name, George Meredith (1828-1909) and Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895). His main works reflect the most outstanding philosophical and moral problems of the period, thus respectively: Eliot’s Adam Bede (1859), an excellent picture of English country life among the humbler classes, Felix Holt the Radical (1866), a critical work on the Reform Bill, and Daniel Deronda (1876), which strongly coloured preoccupation at that period with moral problems and and inexorable realism; Meredith’s Vittoria (1867) which revindicates the spirited handling of the Italian insurrectionary movement and The Egoist (1879), with a moral plot; finally, Huxley’s

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Man’s Place in Nature (1863), Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews (1870), and American Addresses (1877). •

Finally, social writing is represented by: o

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863), whose works showed a biting humour and the observation of human weaknesses, thus The Book of Snobs (1849), The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon (1844), a picaresque novel, and Vanity Fair (1847-1848), which tells about the fortunes of Becky Sharp to denounce the mournful vision of the vanities of mankind, and wickedly satirizes hypocrisy and greed; and The Virginians (1857-1859).

o

The Brontë sisters, Charlotte (1816-1855), Emily (1818-1878) and Anne (18201849) wrote melodramatic, terror and passionate novels addressing the features of the period in which they lived. Thus, Charlotte’s Jane Eyre (1847), full of countryside details, Shirley (1849) and Villette (1853); Emily’s unique Wuthering Heights (1847) in a description of the wild, desolate moors where the main characters conceive their passions in gigantic proportions, described with a stark realism; finally, Anne’s Agnes Grey (1847) and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848).

o

Wilkie Collins (1824-1889), who was considered to be the most successful of the followers of Dickens, specialized in the mystery novel to which he sometimes added a spice of the supernatural. Thus The Dead Secret (1857), The Woman in White (1860) and The Moonstone (1868) as one of his earliest detective stories.

o

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), who was strongly criticized by his stark pesimism in his writing. Among his most famous works, we highlight Tess of the D’Urbevilles (1891), Poems of the past and present (1901), The dynasts (19031908), and Moments of Vision (1917). He is regarded as one of the first modernists in content, attitude rather than form.

o

Charles Dickens (1812-1870), who showed in all his novels a great interest in Social Reform at his time. His novels, full to overflowing with drama, humor, and an endless variety of vivid characters and plot complications, nonetheless spare nothing in their portrayal of what urban life was like for all classes.

o

Finally, among many others not mentioned, we find Joseph Conrad (18571924) and Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), who were profoundly preoccupied with the consequences of imperalism and the British empire expansion, namely in Africa and India, respectively. Let us examine their life, style and main works in detail.

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3.2. Joseph Conrad (1857-1924).

3.2.1. Life.

Jósef Teodor Konrad Naleçz Korzeniowski was born at Berdiczew, in the Ukraine, in a region that had once been a part of Poland but was then under Russian rule. His father Apollo Korzeniowski was an aristocrat without lands since the family estates had been sequestrated in 1839 following an anti-Russian rebellion. Also a poet and translator of English and French literatures, Joseph read Polish and French versions of English novels with his father. When Apollo Korzeniowski became embroiled in political activities, he was sent to exile with his family to Volgoda, northern Russia, in 1861. When he was seven, his mother died of tuberculosis and his father lived in exile until 1869, when Czarist authorities permitted him to move south. Yet, after that remove, his father also died when young Conrad was just eleven, He was then adopted by his mother’s uncle, the indulgent Tadeusz Bobrowski. Educated at Cracow, he was intended for the university, but at the age of seventeen he was determined to go to sea (1874). Actually, he went to Marseilles in he began a long period of adventure at sea where he joined the French merchant marine. Young Conrad was implicated in a Carlist conspiracy to place the Duke of Madrid on the Spanish throne. After a suicide attempt, Conrad joined the British merchant service in 1878 and by 1885 he had his master mariner’s cerfificate, commanding his own ship, Otago. In 1886 he was given British citizenship and he changed officially his name to Joseph Conrad. In the ten years that followed, before ill-health caused him to leave the sea in 1894, he had spent twenty years roaming the world in said and steam ships. Conrad sailed to many parts of the world, including Australia, various ports of the Indian Ocean, Borneo, the Malay states, South America, and the South Pacific Island. Since Conrad did not find shore-life easy, he travelled to the Belgian Congo in 1890. He sailed in Africa up the Congo River, and the journey provided much material for his novel Heart of Darkness. His expedition had left him with malarial gout, which afflicted his wrist so much that he often found writing painful. However, he felt attracted again by the fabled East Indies which became the setting of many of his stories. He sailed between Singapore and Borneo, voyages that gave him an unrivaled background of mysterious creeks and jungle for the tales that he would write after 1896, when he retired from the sea to settle in Ashford, Kent, with his new wife, Jessie Chambers. By 1894 Conrad’s sea life was over. During the long journeys he had started to write and Conrad decided to devote himself entirely to literature. At the age of 36 Conrad settled down in England.

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Conrad sold the American screen rights to his fiction in 1919 and hence, the most famous adaptations made by Alfred Hitchcock’s The Sabotage (1936), based on The Secret Agent (1097), Richard Brooks’s Lord Jim (1964) and Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979), based on Heart of Darkness. Yet, he did not like to work for the film business, and did not know about screenwritings since the studios rejected his scripts. Last years of his life were shadowed by rheumatism. He refused an offer of knighthood in 1924 as he had earlier declined honorary degrees from five universities. Conrad died of a heart attack on August 3, 1924 and was buried in Canterbury.

3.2.2. Style. Although Conrad is known as a novelist, he tried his hand also as a playwright. His first one-act play was not success and the audience rejected it. But after finishing the text he learned the existence of the Censor of the Plays, which inspired his satirical essay about the obscure civil servant. Conrad was an Anglophile who regarded Britain as a land which respected individual liberties. As a writer he accepted the verdict of a free and independent public, but associated this official figure of censorship to the atmosphere of the Far East and the ‘mustiness of the Middle Ages’, which shouldn’t be part of the twentieth-century England (Magnusson & Goring, 1990). Following Alfred (1990:444), “Conrad’s prose style is one of the most indiv idual and readily recognizable in English, not, as might be expected in a Pole, for its eccentricities, but for its full use of the musical potentialities of the language. His careful attention to grouping and rhythm and to such technical devices as alliteration enables him, at his best, to achieve a prose that is akin to poetry. When he writes below his best he can become over-ornamental, self-conscious, and artificially stylized”. Among other features of this writing style, we may mention his subjects, namely about adventure in an unusual or exotic setting due to his experiences in the sea and the exploration of Africa and East Indies; his characters, both men and women, are presented in brief, illuminating flashes and who are vital individuals. They are rarely commonplace and some of his best are villains as Kurtz in The Heart of Darkness; his view of life, out of which Conrad had a profound sense of the tragedy of life and the man’s struggle agains hostile forces; finally, he had a traditional direct narrative method, and the oblique method, by means of which he presents his material in an easy, conversational manner through the medium of a spectator, and gradually he builds up a picture of the situation by brief sense impressions (Albert, 1990).

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3.2.3. Main works. Primarily seen in his own time as a writer of sea stories, Conrad is now highly regarded as a novelist whose work displays a deep moral consciousness and masterful narrative technique. Among his early novels, we find that the two first works were based on his experiences of Malaya, thus Almayer’s Folly (1895); An Outcast of the Islands (1896), where he presents a vivid tropical background and a study of a white man whose moral stamina was sapped by the insidious influence of the tropics; his third early work was The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’ ( 1897), a moving story oflife on board ship, remarkable for a full of romantic description in a powerful atmosphere of mystery and brooding. His next work was Tales of Unrest (1898), which contains five storie s, and was followed by Lord Jim: a Tale (1900). This is one of the best of Conrad’s studies of men whose strength fails them in a moment of crisis, and is again a story of the sea. It is in this work that Conrad introduces for the first time his technique of oblique narrative, the story being told through the ironical Marlow, a character who frequently appears in later novels. Then he wrote Youth: A Narrative; and two other Stories (1902) and Typhoon, and Other Stories (1903), which contain seven tales which include some of Conrad’s most powerful work. In the former collection it is remarkable The Heart of Darkness (1899) for an overwhelming sense of evil and corruption and for its excellent tropical background. Influenced by Henry James, another Conrad’s finest work is Nostromo – A Tale of the Seaboard (1904), which shifts the scene to the coastline of Central America. It is a story of revolution and has many well-drawn portraits. Throughout his fiction Conrad is concerned with moral dilemmas, the isolation of the individual to be tested by experience, and the psychology of inner urges in both groups and individuals. This is reflected in his semi-autobiographical The Mirror of The Sea (1906), which is a series of essays based on his experiences in the oceans of the world and contains excellent pictures. This work was followed by the popular detective story The Secret Agent – A Simple Tale (1907), “which, though it contains some one or two well-drawn figurs and suggests quite powerfully the atmosphere of the Underworld, is not one of his best” (Albert, 1990:442). The same may be said of the stories in A Set of Six (1908) and his tale of Russian revolutionaries, Under Western Eyes (1911), of which the best features are the character of Razumov and the atmosphere of fear. Next work, Twixt Land and Sea - Tales (1912) which contains three outstanding short stories: “Typhoon” and “The Shadow-Line” that describe the testing of human character under conditions of extreme danger and difficulty, and “Some Reminiscences” which testifies his high artistic aims.

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Conrad uses fiction to analyze the macrocosm (world at large) by presenting objectively and scientifically a microcosm. His remoteness from the British reading public, and his consequent his lack of knowledge about what makes a popular novel, makes his stories all the more real. Conrad often maneuvers to keep the reader at a distance from the characters in order to view them objectively. For example, in writing “The Inn of the Two Witches” in the winter of 1912 for the London Pall Mall (1913) and New York Metropolitan (May, 1913) magazines he resorted to another “Chinese box” narrative technique, presumably written in the first person. Then came Chance- A Tale in Two Parts (1914), written in the oblique method of story-telling. Here Marlow appears again as a narrator, but the story is also told from several other points of view. After Victory- An Island Tale (1915) and a further collection of four short stories, Within the Tides – Tales (1915), Conrad wrote The Shadow line- A Confession (1917), a short novel in which the suggestion of the supernatural is present. Other novels followed, such as The Rescue – A Romance of the Shallows (1920), which is long but with moments of high excitement, and shows and excellent picture of primitive men. The Arrow of Gold – A Story between Two Notes (1919) and The Rover (1923) are both set in a background of European history, and were not very successful. In his late years, he wrote Suspense- A Napoleonic Novel (1925), which was unfinished at his death. Other works were published posthumously, such as Tales of Hearsay (1925), four stories, and Last Essays (1926). We shall finally mention in this group his autobiographical novels since they show the real Conrad and his own experiences. Thus, A Personal Record (1912) and Notes on Life and Letters (1921), relevant for Conrad’s views on his own art, and of two novels, The Inheritors- An Extravagant Story (1901) and Romance- A Novel (1903), in which he collaborated with Ford Maddox Hueffer.

3.3. Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936).

3.3.1. Life.

Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay, India, on December 30, 1865, and made a significant contribution to English Literature in various genres including poetry, short story and novel. His birth took place in an affluent family with his father holding the post of Professor of Architectural Sculpture at the Bombay School of Art and his mother coming from a family of accomplished women. He spent his early childhood in India where an “aya” took care of him and where under her influence he came in direct contact with the Indian culture and traditions.

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Following Sullivan (1993), his parents decided to send him to England for education and so at the young age of five he started living in England with Madam Rosa, the landlady of the lodge he lived in, where for the next six years he lived a life of misery due to the mistreatment since he faced beatings and general victimization. Due to this sudden change in environment and the evil treatment he received, he suffered from insomnia for the rest of his life. This played an important part in his literary imagination (Sandison A.G.). His parents removed him from the rigidly Calvinistic foster home and placed him in a private school at the age of twelve. The English schoolboy code of honor and duty deeply affected his views in later life, especially when it involved loyalty to a group or a team. Returning to India in 1882 he worked as a newspaper reporter for the Lahore Civil and Military Gazette and the Allahabad Pioneer (1882-1887), and a part-time writer and this helped him to gain a rich experience of colonial life which he later presented in his stories and poems. Later on, in 1907 Kipling won the Nobel prize in literature in consideration of the power of observation, originality of imagination, virility of ideas and remarkable talent for narration which characterized his writings. The death of both his children, Josephine and John, deeply affected his life. Therefore, both these incidents left a profound impression on his life, which his works published in the subsequent years after their deaths displays. Between 1919 and 1932 he travelled intermittently, and continued to publish stories, poems, sketches and historical works though his output dwindled. As he grew older his works display his preoccupation with physical and psychological strain, breakdown, and recovery. In 1936, plagued by illness, he passed away into the world beyond, leaving behind a legacy that will live for centuries to come (Sullivan, 1993).

3.3.2. Style.

Since Kipling wrote during the period known as the Victorian Age, his writings show the main topics of the English and Western Literature of the time, thus conservatism, optimism and selfassurance both in prose and poetry. Though Kipling’s works achieved literary fame during his early years, as he grew older his works faced enormous amount of literary criticism. His works dealt with racial and imperialistic topics which attracted a lot of criticss, who condemned the fact that unlike the popular model of poetry, Kipling’ works did not have an underlying meaning to it and that interpreting it required no more than one reading.

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As Kipling grew older his works, his popularity among the masses persisted without change. In fact due to his ability to relate to the layman as well as the literary elite through his works, he joined a select group of authors who reached a worldwide audience of considerable diversity. Kipling’s reputation started a revival course after T.S. Eliot’s essay on his works where Eliot describes the most salient feature of Kipling style: the “great verse” that sometimes unintentionally changes into poetry. In his lifetime Kipling went from the unofficial Poet Laureate of Great Britan to one of the most denounced poet in English Literary History. In contrast to the path his reputation took, Rudyard Kipling improved as a poet as his career matured and by the time of his death Kipling had compiled one of the most diverse collection of poetry in English Literature. Since Kipling was an Imperialist, his main themes read about attitudes towards British rule in India. Kipling believed it was right and proper for Britain to “own” India and rule its people, and the possibility that this position might be questionable never seems to have crossed his mind. At the time he was writing there was a considerable ferment of revolt among Indians against British rule, and yet, he has shown, at points in Kim (1901) when in Chapter 3 he has an old soldier comment on the Great Mutiny of 1857, dismissing it as “madness”.

He was a prolific and versatile writer whose journalistic experience served him to great extent throughouthis career. His prose works, which include stories of Indian life, of children, and of animals are told with great vitality. He had an inventive faculty, a romantic taste for the adventurous and the supernatural, and an apparently careless, very colloquial style, which ensured for his work a popular reception. He also dealt with the superiority of the white race, of Britain’s undoubted mission to extend through her imperial policy the benefits of civilization to the rest of the world. He believed in the progress and value of the machine, found and echo in the hearts of many of his readers since they lived the late consequences of the industrial revolution.

He presented a really good picture of Anglo-Indian and of native life. His portraits of soldiers, natives and of children were vivid and real, with a soft characterization. His background is clearly visualized and realistically presented since he had a great ability to create an atmosphere of mystery. The apparent carelessness of his style was a deliberate and skilfully cultivated technique.

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3.3.3. Main works. Kipling’s works span over five decades both as poetry and prose. Regarding the former, in 1886 he published his first volume of poetry, Departmental Ditties and other poems followed, such as Barrack-room Balladas (1892), The Seven Seas (1896), The Five Nations (1903), Inclusive Verse 1885-1918 (1919) and Poems, 1886-1929 (1930). Over the immediately following years he published some of his most exquisite works including his most acclaimed poem Recessional . Regarding prose works, between 1887 and 1889 he published six volumes of short stories set in and concerned with the India he had come to know and love so well. When he returned to England he found himself already recognized and acclaimed as a brilliant writer. Earlier prose works include Plain Tales from the Hills (1888), Soldiers Three (1888), The Phantom Rickshaw (1888), Wee Willie Winkie (1888), Life’s Handicap (1891), Many Inventions (1893), The Jungle Book (1894), Captains Courageous (1897), The Days’s Work (1898), and his most famed novel, Kim (1901). Other works followed, thus Just-so Stories for Little Children (1910), Debits and Credits (1926), and Limits and Renewals (1932).

4. EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS IN LANGUAGE TEACHING.

Literature, and therefore, literary language is one of the most salient aspect of educational activity. In classrooms all kinds of literary language (poetry, drama, novel, prose, periodicals – newspapers, pamphlets-), either spoken or written, is going on for most of the time. Yet, handling literary productions in the past makes relevant the analysis of ‘literature in the Victorian period and, in particular, the rise of one of the most relevant literary forms for students: the novel, as well as periodicals, poems, essays, and poetry, as reflected in the two authors under study. Hence it makes sense to examine the historical background of the Victorian period so as to provide a particular period of time with an appropriate context (imperialism, post-colonial literature).

Currently, action research groups attempt to bring about change in classroom learning and teaching through a focus on literary production under two premises. First, because they believe learning is an integral aspect of any form of activity and second, because education at all levels must be conceived in terms of literature and history. The basis for these assumptions is to be found in an attempt, through the use of historical events, to develop understanding of students’ shared but diverse social and physical environment.

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Learning involves a process of transformation of participation itself which has far reaching implications on the role of the teacher in the teaching-learning relationship. This means that literary productions are an analytic tool and that teachers need to identify the potential contributions and potential limitations of them before we can make good use of the historical events which frame the literary period.

So, literature productions may be easily approached by means of the subjects of History, Language and Literature by establishing a paralelism with the Spanish one (age, literature forms, events). Since literature may be approached in linguistic terms, regarding form and function (morphology, lexis, structure, form) and also from a cross-curricular perspective (Sociology, History, English, French, Spanish Language and Literature), Spanish students are expected to know about the history of Britain and its influence in the world.

In addition, one of the objectives of teaching the English language is to provide good models of almost any kind of literary productions for future studies. Following van Ek & Trim (2001), ‘the learners can perform, within the limits of the resources available to them, those writing (and oral) tasks which adult citizens in general may wish, or be called upon, to carry out in their private capacity or as members of the general public’ when dealing with their future regarding personal and professional life.

Moreover, nowadays new technologies may provide a new direction to language teaching as they set more appropriate context for students to experience the target culture. Present-day approaches deal with a communicative competence model in which first, there is an emphasis on significance over form, and secondly, motivation and involvement are enhanced by means of new technologies. Hence literary productions and the history of the period may be approched in terms of films and drama representations in class, among others, and in this case, by means of books (novels: historical, terror, descriptive), paper (essays), among others.

Actually, Conrad’s influence upon 20th-century literature was wide since Ernest Hemingway expressed special admiration for the author, and his impact is seen in among others in the work of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Arthur Koestler, T.S. Eliot, Marcel Proust, André Malraux, LouisFerdiand Céline, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Graham Greene. Moreover, several of Conrad’s stories have been filmed. The most famous adaptations are Alfred Hitchcock’s The Sabotage (1936), based on The Secret Agent (1097), Richard Brooks’s Lord Jim (1964) and Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979), based on Heart of Darkness; as well as two of Rudyard Kipling’s works, The Jungle Book (1894) and Kim (1901).

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The success partly lies in the way literary works become real to the users. Some of this motivational force is brought about by intervening in authentic communicative events. Otherwise, we have to recreate as much as possible the whole cultural environment in the classroom by means of documentaries, history books, or their family’s stories. This is to be achieved within the framework of the European Council (1998) and, in particular, the Spanish Educational System which establishes a common reference framework for the teaching of foreign languages where students are intended to carry out several communication tasks with specific communicative goals, for instance, how to locate a literary work within a particular historical period.

Analytic interpretation of texts in all genres should become part of every literary student’s basic competence (B.O.E., 2004). There are hidden influences at work beneath the textual surface: these may be sociocultural, inter and intratextual. The literary student has to discover these, and wherever necessary apply them in further examination. The main aims that our currently educational system focuses on are mostly sociocultural, to facilitate the study of cultural themes, as our students must be aware of their current social reality within the European framework.

5. CONCLUSION.

Since literature reflects the main concerns of a nation at all levels, it is extremely important for students to be aware of the close relationship between History and Literature so as to understand the main plot of a novel, short story, or any other form of literary work. In this unit, we have particularly approached the period of the Victorian Age and Imperialism as a time of great changes, colonial expansion and wars. For the better, or for the worse.

The aim of this unit was to provide a useful introduction to the development and administration of the British colonial empire, namely in the eighteenth and ninete enth centuries since it is considered to be a turning point in the history of Great Britain because of the consequences that followed. Our main aim was to set in context the writing of relevant figures such as Joseph Conrad and Rudyard Kipling so as to show how this situation was reflected in the literature of the time.

In doing so, it was necessary to revise some conceptions related to the imperial expansion such as the difference between the concepts imperialism vs. colonialism and also, the situation in Great Britain before and during the eighteenth and nineteenth century so as to better understand

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the deep changes which gave way to this colonial expansion, and analyse the reasons why Great Britain was determined to take control of great areas far from the Continent.

Therefore, we have examined the policy of the colonial expansion regarding the two British empires. Then, we considered quite relevant to trace back in time to analyse the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries since they have the answer for the establishment of the first British empire regarding the political background in Great Britain at that time; the Industrial Revolution and its consequences on the imperial expansion.

Moreover, we have examined the seventeeth-century great developments, their consequences in the eighteenth century, and the main British colonies in America with the establishment of the first American colonies and in the rest of the world (India, Africa, Australia, etc). Next, we have analysed how imperial expansion developed in the nineteenth century regarding the development of the second British empire at a political, social and economic background, and we have offered an account of the main nineteenth-century British colonies; finally, on reaching the twentieth century we have analysed the dismantling of the British empire.

With this background in mind, we were ready to provide a literary background for the Victorian Literature and, in particular, to the Post-colonial or imperalist literature, namely reflected through the figures of the Victorian novelists Joseph Conrad and Rudyard Kipling . In this chapter, we have namely dealt with the nineteenth-century literature in the Victorian period, that is, from 1837 to 1901 so as to frame Conrad and Kipling’s literary works in an appropriate social and political context to make him coincide with the late consequences of the British imperialism. So far, we have attempted to provide the reader in this presentation with a historical background on the vast amount of literature productions in the Victorian period, and its further developments up to the nineteenth and twentieth century. This information is relevant for language learners, even 2nd year Bachillerato students, who do not automatically establish similiarities between British, Spanish and worldwide literary works. So, learners need to have these associations brought to their attention in cross-curricular settings. As we have seen, understanding how literature developed and is reflected in our world today is important to students, who are expected to be aware of the richness of English literature, not only in Great Britain but also in other English-speaking countries.

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