The Long Eighteenth Century

by Frank O'Gorman

  Improvements in communications stimulated the movement of goods, whether agricultural or industrial, and thus promoted trade, external but particularly, internal. It was not domestic markets alone which drove and sustained the demand for manufactured goods; new markets abroad also created demand. Indeed, foreign demand for British goods was always well ahead both of population growth and of output. At the start of the eighteenth century exports represented about 7 per cent of national output, about 17 per cent at the end. One historian has estimated that over the century as a whole exports were responsible for as much as 40 per cent of the increase in industrial output.18 Furthermore, by 1800 about one-third of all manufactured goods were exported compared to one-fifth at the beginning of the century. Although the Continental System served for a time to depress British trade with Europe, it focused British interest upon new markets in South America. After the war British exports to Europe quickly recovered, until in 1830 they accounted for 40 per cent of all exports. As for trade with North America, in spite of the pessimism which overcame commercial circles at the end of the American war, the older patterns of commerce with that continent rapidly re-established themselves in the 1780s. Indeed, by 1785 British trade with America had recovered, and the new nation proceeded to supply raw cotton in ever-increasing quantities for the British market. In return, British manufactures satisfied rapidly rising consumer demand in America.

  Commercial expansion stimulated industrial development in Britain but its importance should not be exaggerated. It is not clear, for example, that commercial expansion did much directly to stimulate technological change. Down to the 1780s most of the growth in exports was in traditional sectors such as wool and metals. The important inventions in cotton occurred when exports were still small, not when they were leaping ahead. Similarly, it cannot be maintained that it was profits from the commercial sector which fuelled the drive to invest in industry. It has been estimated that reinvested profits amounted at most to 15 per cent of total investment in the British economy. Nevertheless, commerce familiarized people with credit transactions and bills of exchange, and stimulated profit-making and profit-seeking values. In some towns, especially the west-coast ports of Bristol, Glasgow and Liverpool, local accumulations of capital led to industrial investment in the textile industries in their respective regions, but their extent was limited. Finally, commerce did not automatically create a surplus in the balance of trade. After 1800, indeed, the price of exports fell steeply and Britain carried a mounting trade deficit, not a surplus. By 1815, therefore, the City of London had come to play a vital part in financing investment and trade with new markets in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

  The enlargement of the British Empire was a natural extension of steadily mounting commercial activity. Here, once more, political considerations played their part. This is not to say that rational programmes of imperial expansion and government existed. They did not. Even in the years after the loss of the American colonies there were few signs of a systematic rethinking of imperial relationships. Consciously motivated policies of imperial expansion were conspicuous by their absence. Although there was much reflective theorizing about the British Empire, precious little of it seems to have penetrated ministerial circles. Imperial questions were dealt with as they arose. Some historians have even doubted whether anything like an ‘imperial policy’ existed at all. What may politely be termed administrative pluralism reigned. Between 1768 and 1782 a third or Colonial Secretary existed, but thereafter colonial policy was transferred to the Home Secretary. In 1784 a replacement for the old Board of Trade came into existence and it exercised some responsibility for the colonies. The new Indian territories remained outside this structure. Until 1784 they were ruled by an army of officials from the East India Company. In 1784 Pitt’s India Bill established a Board of Control which exercised indirect supervision over British territorial possessions in India. Significantly, the same bill extended the powers of the governor-general over his council. In most places the old ways and the old structures continued. The empire remained an untidy mixture of colonies and settlements, and it was still governed according to the old prescriptions.

  Yet it would be absurd to deny that in the later eighteenth century a remorseless and strategic policy or imperial acquisition was pursued by the British state. It was not undertaken according to any blueprint and it was not achieved on any preconceived timetable. It amounted, however, to a coherent pattern of commercially valuable acquisitions. The loss of the American colonies was compensated for by the consolidation of the empire in Canada and by a flood of new acquisitions, most of them in commercially and strategically vital locations. In Australia, Britain acquired New South Wales (1788). The annexation of the Cape (1806) secured the route to India. In Africa she occupied Sierra Leone (1808), Mauritius (1810), the Gambia (1816) and the Gold Coast (1821). In Asia she obtained Penang (1785), Ceylon (1795), Singapore (1819), Malacca (1824) and Western Burma (1824). In India the empire was extended by the acquisition of Bengal (1793) and Poona (1802). In the Caribbean Britain won Trinidad (1797), Tobago and St Lucia (1803) and Demerara (1814). In the government of these numerous and widely distributed colonies. Significantly, by the early nineteenth century, the character of the British Empire was undergoing great changes new problems would have to be confronted. In the 1770s most imperial subjects outside Britain had been white, Christian and of British extraction and ruled with some element of local self-government. By 1830 none of this could be said. Nevertheless, the empire remained a distinctly British empire. Emigrants took with them to the colonies a strong British cultural nationalism which was to have a long and enduring history. At the same time they sought to foster the loyalty of local elites whose respect for the principles of hierarchy and property – to say nothing of Evangelical Christianity – reflected the dominant patterns of civilized life in Britain itself. In the second half of the period covered by this book, then, the British Empire became a truly global empire, ruled by the British crown in Parliament, an empire which made Britain the greatest power on earth. It was an intoxicating vision, the object of immense pride and burgeoning patriotism. Such an imperial consciousness emphasized and confirmed a powerful Protestant triumphalism.

  British policymakers were noticeably anxious to impose a strong political imprint upon the colonies. In many parts of the empire after 1783 imperial government struck a firm note, as though Britain had learned the lessons of ‘salutary neglect’ which had lost her the American colonies. Both the Cape and New South Wales received authoritarian governors. Canada received in 1791 a constitution in which a governor-general, assisted by an appointed legislative council in the two provinces of Upper Canada (Ontario) and Lower Canada (Quebec), more than balanced the powers of elected provincial assemblies. The government of India was the subject of many changes which owed much to political considerations but little to systematic thought and planning. After 1784 the subcontinent was governed by a succession of strong governor-generals who were in theory responsible to a council of Indian and English officials.

  The British still assumed that the world trading role of her empire brought economic benefits to the mother country which were indispensable to her great-power status. They wished to maintain colonies as outlets for exports and as sources of materials. Consequently, they never doubted that colonial trade should be reserved for British shipping and colonial markets retained for British manufactured goods. Britain had always been determined to retain her empire in North America and the West Indies; indeed, her inflexible determination to retain the North American colonies had driven her into one of the most disastrous wars in her history. Until the 1770s the British had assumed that American colonists, like the Welsh and the Scots, were part of the British nation. Defeat plunged Britain into a mood of intense pessimism. The loss of the colonies, it was widely believed, presaged economic ruin and national decline. Yet this mood soon passed; national resilience restored British pride and optimism. Finally, earlier uncertainty about
the value of India was quickly overcome; before the end of the century the subcontinent was well on the way to becoming a jewel in the imperial crown.

  Yet there can be no doubting the changing orientation of Britain’s geopolitical role as she underwent the transition from European to world power. In 1700, 82 per cent of Britain’s home produced exports went to Europe; in 1772 it was only 40 per cent. In 1700, 68 per cent of her imports came from Europe; in 1772 only 47 per cent did. In 1713–17 Europe’s share of Britain’s overseas trade was 74 per cent; by 1803–7 it was down to 33 per cent. There are at least two economic explanations for this fundamental shift in the pattern of British commerce. First, there is some evidence that down to the third quarter of the century it was import-led demand, especially for the new colonial products, silk and tobacco, which determined the changing pattern of British trade. Second, Britain needed to find new markets for her wares in view of the difficulty of expanding markets for the old – largely woollen – products. This she did particularly in British North America. The percentage of British domestic exports going to North America, in fact, steadily increased from 10 per cent in 1700 to 37 per cent in 1772 and to no less than 57 per cent in 1800. Britain was already becoming the warehouse as well as the shop window of the world.19

  This she achieved in spite of, perhaps in some ways because of, her involvement in the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. Although it has been argued that the wars in fact inhibited rather than stimulated the economy, the real position is hugely complex. The evidence available suggests that the wars did slow down the levels of growth of the British economy achieved during the exceptional period of recovery after the American war, 1783–92. Some British industries were damaged by the war, including building, brewing, malt, salt and spirits, but others surged ahead, including shipbuilding, metallurgy, textiles, silk and paper. In general, the average rate of growth of industrial production was more rapid in the 1780s and 1820s than in the intervening decades, but not by an enormous margin. In fact trade continued to increase strongly in that period, even compared to the levels of 1783–92. Exports to America boomed and, thanks to the superiority achieved by the British navy, trade with mainland Europe continued to increase, until the Peace of Amiens. The closure of European ports to British ships during 1806–14 had a serious effect but in the long term the integration of Ireland, the transfer to Britain of enemy colonies in 1815 and the opening up of the South American trade were to be of far greater significance.

  Of course, the war damaged industry in some ways, erecting obstacles to imports and exports and intensifying competition for scarce resources of raw materials and skills. Yet it created new demands, stimulated production, gave rise to rapid improvements in the banking system and, in the end, led to the capture of new markets. To all this, the policies of the government contributed hugely.‘Pitt’s policies liberalized credit, depressed real interest rates, and contained the accumulation of public debt by squeezing current consumption. That great administrator has not received anything like the praise he deserves for keeping the Industrial Revolution on course during a major war.’20 Successive British governments were able to sustain existing levels of private capital formation while raising sufficient public capital with which to conduct the wars against France. (What suffered during the war was not private capital but private consumption, which declined from an estimated 83 per cent of national expenditure in 1788–92 to 64 per cent in the closing years of the war.) At the same time, successive governments did everything they could to reassure investors in government stock of the security of their investments and of their regular redemption both during and after the war. In short, the confidence of the investing community was maintained. Perhaps even more important, in the long term, Britain had achieved – and was demonstrating that she could sustain – great-power status. Military expenditure after the wars was 2.7 times higher at constant prices than it had been before the war and at those levels it stayed.21 Britain survived the years of war with great success. Indeed, the wars had more than paid for themselves, while Britain remained on course for further expansion and growth. Finally, she had come close to eliminating her nearest neighbour as a serious competitor for military, imperial and economic predominance in Europe.22

  THE SOCIAL ORDER

  A transfiguring aristocracy

  One of the most important transitions of all those experienced during the long eighteenth century is the transition from a society of orders to a society which more nearly resembled the ‘class society’ of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. To what extent had a ‘class society’ emerged in Britain by the end of the long eighteenth century? Historians have devoted a remarkable amount of energy to this issue, trying to prove or disprove the importance of class relationships in the long eighteenth century. Here, I can do little more than summarize the outlines of the debate. In brief, I shall argue that the old model of a hierarchical society of orders, resting upon foundations of deference and reciprocal obligation, exemplified by a monarch of enormous symbolic power, was remarkably resilient, continuing until the end of the eighteenth century to dominate contemporary thought and practice. By then class perspectives were gaining in currency. By 1830 they were well on the way to rivalling – but had not yet displaced – the traditional language of a society of orders. Furthermore, I shall argue that, with some exceptions, discussions of society in class terms, while tending to be dismissive of capitalist society, were essentially moderate, collaborative and peaceful.

  Nobody could seriously deny that during the long eighteenth century Britain displayed serious social tensions and experienced bitter economic divisions. There was, indeed, conflict in Hanoverian society but it was not the conflict of classes. Some of the most bitter conflicts were between religious denominations. Others took place between privileged bodies such as corporations and those who were excluded from them. A further catalyst of conflict was that between government employees, such as excise officers or press gangs and the population at large. Nor should we ignore the possibilities of conflict within the same social group. Internal disputes among artisans, for example, might be almost as serious as disputes between artisans and their suppliers or customers. In such a society, the idea of conflict between ‘classes’ was unfamiliar. The sources of conflict in the long eighteenth century were usually anything other than the extremely vague and indeterminate divisions of ‘class’. Mutual dependence was the order of the day, not systematic social conflict. Most challenges to established authority, moreover, could normally be contained and controlled by existing mechanisms such as the Poor Law, petty and quarter Sessions and, at times, by the militia.

  In the literature of the time there are many criticisms of existing society, but they do not normally or directly dispute the principle of hierarchy.23 They drew attention to its abuse and excesses, they condemned the selfish restriction of privileges to the few and they advocated the widening of access to those privileges, not the abolition of the privileges themselves. The language of class conflict had not yet arrived. Earlier in the eighteenth century, when contemporaries tried to conflate the complex gradations of their society of orders into larger and more manageable groups they usually employed the language of ‘ranks’ and ‘orders’, suggesting that wealth and status were conferred by birth. But as the century wore on, and as the static, traditional language of orders became less useful to a mobile and acquisitive society, other words began to be used: ‘sorts’, ‘parts’, ‘interests’ and, of course, ‘classes’. It is not clear which of these was the most common. Furthermore, the language of orders and the newer language of social description could coexist. Guy Miege, for example, in the early eighteenth century was an exponent of both, writing about ‘orders and degrees’ on some occasions but adopting the language of ‘sorts’ on others. Interestingly, as the eighteenth century wore on it became increasingly common for observers to describe the society around them in tripartite terms. Defoe singled out the ‘gentry’, the ‘tradesman’ and the ‘lab
ouring people’. David Hume wrote of ‘the great’, ‘the middle station of life’ and ‘the poor’. Even Gregory King had admitted that he sometimes used the word ‘classes’ to describe people and adopted the usage of ‘the better sort’, ‘the middle sort’ and ‘the poorest sort’. In the second half of the century, the tendency to simplify the social structure into three sections became even more pronounced. Although it remained possible to divide it into five or seven, the social structure was usually divided neatly into triads, as was the case for so many other institutions such as ‘King, Lords and Commons’. One social triad employed the distinction between ‘gentlemen’, ‘the people’ (the most respectable among the propertied element who believed themselves to be part of the political order) and ‘the mob’ (those who either excluded themselves or were excluded). More familiar, however, were ‘higher, middling and lower’, which began to reshape themselves into ‘upper, middle and industrious’ and, eventually, ‘upper, middle and working’. The terminology ‘working class’ first appears in 1789. Until then, ‘industrious’ or ‘lower’ or, more commonly, ‘labouring’ class or classes were to be found. By the end of the eighteenth century the language of class – ‘the upper class’, ‘the middle class’, ‘the working class’ – was being employed with some frequency, as also was the language of classes ‘the upper classes’, ‘the middle or middling classes’ and ‘the working or labouring classes’. Yet, as Nicholas Rogers has argued, ‘Class was synonymous with category. It lacked the sociological connotations of sociological constructions of identity which it acquired later.’24

  It is likely that contemporaries were inhibited from developing a fully-fledged three-class model of their society by the close and overlapping relations between many members of the ‘upper’ and ‘middle’ classes. In an earlier chapter we described the ruling order of Hanoverian Britain as a flexible and limited aristocracy, driven by economic acquisition and commercial ambition as well as by the desire to maintain its landed status. As the eighteenth century wore on, social power was increasingly coming to rest upon the ready cooperation of many members of the middling orders, who were charged with ever-expanding spheres of administration. After the middle of the eighteenth century these tendencies intensified. By the end of the eighteenth century the middling orders were identifying their fortunes with those of the landed aristocracy more strongly than ever before. It was clearly in the interests of many of them to support and sustain the model of a benevolent, hierarchical society.25