Victorious Century: The United Kingdom, 1800-1906

Quite readable. Rather a lot of restatement tho. Excellent bibliographic essay, and a wider than usual consideration of Empire.

His is a very interesting and worthwhile history of 19th century Britain.

I have audio book version and I’ve deducted one star because I really don’t like the reader’s voice. It’s quite nasal and I find it annoying after a while. One other irritant is the he reads the quotations of 19th century figures in very ponderous and affected tones, almost like he considers these people to have been somehow mentally deficient.

Overall, a worthwhile book but I don’t like the reader on the audio book version.

I’ll begin my review of Sir David Cannadine’s magnificent history of the United Kingdom in the nineteenth century with a reference to the same book he himself chose to quote as part of his Introduction: Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. Just as France in the 1780s and 90s was at a major turning point in its history, so was Great Britain and its possessions during the 1800s. This is a massive work of 530 pages plus suggestions for further reading and an Index (but unfortunately no Notes or formal Bibliography.) The time frame runs roughly from the legislation that formally joined Ireland with Great Britain in one United Kingdom in 1800 through the pivotal General Election of 1906 which installed a large Liberal majority and Government in Westminster.

In 1800 the new United Kingdom was embroiled in an on-again off-again conflict with France that had lasted through most of the preceding century and was now, with the advent of Napoleon, about to enter its most dangerous phase for the British, with the threat of invasion or massive military defeat seeming a definite possibility. The struggle did not end until 1815, leaving Britain as a dominant but not unchallenged major power for the next century. Cannadine ably traces the development of the British nation during that century: noting the successive periods of reform and then retrenchment, the political shifts between Tories (who became the Conservatives) and Whigs (who eventually evolved into the Liberals), the personalities and policies of the Prime Ministers and other leaders, and above all the economic expansion that made Britain at mid century an industrial and commercial giant. The nineteenth century was the heyday of the British Empire, which Cannadine explains grew erratically, usually powered by expansion-minded traders, adventurers, and imperial officials who took matters into their own hands, presenting London with faits accompli which ministers had little choice but to accept, however reluctantly. This was also a century of enormous achievements in the arts and sciences, and Cannadine does a good job chronicling the multitudes of Darwins, Wordsworths, Tennysons, and many others who enhanced British life and learning. The final chapters detail the imperial apogee of the 1880s and 90s and the early years of the twentieth century, addressing the great wealth and prosperity of those years but also covering the growing fear that decline was inevitable and fast approaching Cannadine chose to end his Epilogue with a quote from Kipling’s Recessional, another highly appropriate choice.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I appreciated Cannadine’s ability to encapsulate the dramatic changes and critical events of the period in a few paragraphs or pages, as well as the many short vignettes in which he captured the personalities and achievements of politicians like Gladstone, Disraeli, Palmerston, and Salisbury, and I found his descriptions of the many scientists, authors, and artists of the era interesting as well. His depictions of London at the time of the Great Exhibition of 1851 and Ireland during the potato famine of the 1840s, among many others, are vivid and colorful. Victorious Century well deserves its place as part of the nine volume Penguin History of Britain.

Excellent read – gives a broad view of an eventful century although perhaps skewed a little too much towards political history – nevertheless less very enjoyable.