(De Luca, Grillo, Pace, Ranzoli, Literature and Beyond, vol. 3, Loescher Editore, 1997, pp. 109-117)

1798 T            The French Revolution breaks out

1793              Britain begins wars against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France.

1804              Napoleon crowns himself Emperor of France.

1811-12         Textile workers attack new mills and machinery in the Luddite Riots

1815              The Duke of Wellington defeats Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo and ends the war against the French

1819              Peterloo Massacre: a meeting for Parliamentary Reform is dispersed in Manchester.

1832              The First Reform Bill extends the right to vote to middle-class men.

1837              Queen Victoria comes to the throne.

Historians refer to this period as the `Age of Revolution'. It opens with the American Declaration of Independence and the loss of the American colonies and is characterised by the effects of the political revolution in France and the Industrial Revolution at home.

The French Revolution (1789-94) destroyed the old social order in the name of liberty, equality and fraternity and marked the beginning of the rise of the middle class. It was followed by the ascent of Napoleon who became Emperor in 1804. His armies dominated Europe and involved Britain in several wars from 1793 till 1815 when the Duke of Wellington defeated him at the Battle of Waterloo.

Meanwhile England was being radically transformed by the Industrial Revolution which caused great social unrest among the working class. It generated violent class conflict between employers and workers, most notably in the Luddite Riots of 1811-12 when textile workers in the North of England attacked the new mills and machinery which had put them out of work.

Radicalism on the French model flourished in the early part of the period. British Radicalism focused on the demand for `radical' reforms of the electoral system and for universal suffrage. Radicals believed that Parliament should represent the people and not the property-owners as the Tories claimed. The Tory government, which held power for most of the period, combated radicalism through restrictions on freedom of speech and association and through the use of secret agents and the armed forces. A clash between government and reformers was inevitable. It came with the Peterloo Massacre of 1819 in which 15 people were killed and many were wounded when mounted troops charged a crowd of 60,000 people who had gathered in Manchester for a meeting on the need for electoral reform.

By the 1820s radicalism was a spent force, partly because of the success of Government tactics, partly because of disillusionment over the violent and unsuccessful course French republicanism had taken and partly because of the improvement in the economic situation. The demand for parliamentary reform was however partially met in the First Reform Act of 1832 which extended the right to vote to thr middle-class men and undermined the great power of the landed aristocracy.

The pace of territorial expansion slowed down in the Romantic period. The loss of the 13 American colonies gave the British a distaste for colonies. But as the Industrial Revolution required the development of more overseas markets, the country^- was soon to acquire new territories in the interests of her commerce.

FOCUS ON  The Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution is a convenient phrase to describe the change from an agrarian or maritime economy to an industrialised (factory-based) economy which gathered force in the Romantic period and radically transformed ' England (the Midlands and the North) and the Scottish Lowlands.

The origin of the term
The term `Industrial Revolution' first appeared in the 1830s but it came into general use after the lectures given by '; the English historian Arnold Toynbee (see D1, p. 125). He felt that Britain had undergone such an industrial ; upheaval that the term `revolution' was a convenient label. The term could however be misleading because it ' suggests a sudden and violent event. On the contrary, changes began to be felt in Britain around 1780 and ' developed over a number of decades and as a continuing process for which dates cannot be given. Several factors interacted to facilitate the industrial transformation of Britain which first affected the textile and ' metal industries.

The most important factors were the technological innovations that made industrialization possible. The old sources of energy like water-and wind-power were replaced by steam-power. Steam engines (invented in 1698 but improved by James Watt in 1769) needed fuel in vast quantities, which was provided by coal.

Other British technical innovations included processes for producing wrought iron, Hargreaves's spinning-jenny (1768) and Cartwright's power loom (1785) which transformed the Lancashire cotton industry and later the Yorkshire woollen industry.

Coal was at the heart of the Industrial Revolution. Industries like iron-making were based on coal mines and the growth of the textile industry was linked to the coalfields of Lancashire and Yorkshire. Coal mines grew from small pits to large mines employing a great number of colliers and coal production doubled between 1750 and 1800. 'The spread of canals and railways cut the cost of transporting coal from mines to factories which were sited near coalfields.

The use of iron instead of wood as a raw material for buildings and machines, the use of large steam engines, new mass-production methods to get cheaper goods were responsible for the development of large-scale factory manufacturing. The cotton and woollen industries which had been spread throughout the land in small units became concentrated in huge factories in Lancashire and Yorkshire. Similarly, small-scale iron foundries disappeared and huge new works appeared in South Wales and in the Scottish Lowlands.

English history in this period is largely the story of England's involvement with the Revolution. The event was greeted with general enthusiasm. Poets like Blake, the young Wordsworth and Coleridge all had the sense of being present at some apocalyptic momentous event in history.

Approval of what was happening in France was characteristic of much British opinion. The great exception was Edmund Burke, a statesman and thinker and a great prose writer. In his Reflections on the Revolution in France, published in 1790, he described the French Revolution as a plunge back into savagery and advocated reform rather than revolution. He glorified the positive aspects of the social contract, paying little attention to the human misery which was caused by an unfair and uncaring society.

The establishment became really alarmed by the reply of the Anglo-American radical Tom Paine, The Rights of Man (1791). Paine saw the established institutions as corrupt and malign, just as Blake did in his Songs of Experience. He contrasted England unfavourably with revolutionary France and independent America and hoped that a democratic movement might soon affect the whole of Europe.

While the Reflections sold 19,000 copies in six months, The Rights of Man sold 200,000, an incredible total for the society of the time.

Britain's Industrial Revolution began around 1780 and brought about a radical change from an economy based on farms to one that relies on factories. Before the revolution Britain's main industries were carried on in small units and workshops: for example, the woollen industry was based on families spinning and weaving wool in their homes (cottage or domestic system). The factory system brought about a real transformation of the country.

Several factors interacted to produce the Industrial Revolution, like demographic changes due mainly to population growth. The Industrial Revolution relied upon a rapidly growing population which provided increasing numbers of consumers and workers for factories. More people looking for work helped keep down wages and led to low prices and higher profits.

The expansion in the industrial population brought with it the rise of the factory town especially in northern areas. Many people moved to towns to find work in the mills and factories. Several factory owners built houses for their workers near their works - they were badly built with no water supply or sanitation. Living conditions were in general very poor and working conditions in factories and mines very dangerous.

The increasing industrial system required more and better roads and a network of canals to bring raw materials to factories and send finished goods to market. The phenomenon is often described as the Transport Revolution - its size is really huge: 3,000 miles of canals were built between 1760 and 1820.

A deep transformation affected also the rural areas. The spread of enclosures and technical innovations caused an Agricultural Revolution which went on at the same time as the Industrial Revolution and was linked to it. Land was bought by great landowners, enclosed with fences and farmed on a bigger scale through the new machines which helped change the face of farming into a more mechanised activity. Many peasants moved into towns to join the class of industrial workers.

Before the Indusn^-ial Revolution the urban working class did not exist in British society. The consciousness of being part of a working class originated in a number of different organisations and groups which laid the foundations of the Trade-Union Movement.

In the late 18th century the owners started to resent the state's interference in wages and contracts. In addition, the growing population was putting great pressure on industries to increase output. As business became larger, the master-employee relationship deteriorated and became more impersonal.

The workers began to form trade clubs or associations to look after their interests. By the end of the 18th century trade clubs were joining together into larger `combinations'. Their aim was to achieve improved working conditions and higher wages, thus taking on the role of a trade union. But the ruling classes associated `combinations' with revolutionary activity and forced Parliament to declare them illegal in 1799-1800. They continued to exist, often in secret, and were finally legalised in 1824.

Romanticism affected the whole of European culture in different ways and at different times. The three main branches of the Romantic Movement were German, English and French. Each had its individual development and quality and each was interrelated with the others. German Romanticism had a preparatory stage in the Sturm und Drang movement of the 1770s and was essentially philosophical. English Romanticism started in the 1780s and is best represented by its poetry. French Romanticism developed mainly in drama and literary criticism; its way was prepared by the general influence of Rousseau on French culture. Rousseau was immensely influential throughout Europe, particularly in his claim that man is good by nature but corrupted by society and in his conception of nature as a life-giving force. In Italy the Romantic Movement officially started in 1816; it had a strong nationalistic component and found its best expression in poetry and in the novel.

There is a close relation between the cultural aspects of Romanticism and the socio-historical context in which it developed. We will confine ourselves to two events only - the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution. As you have seen, the political attitudes of many Romantic writers were responses to the issues and changes brought about by the French Revolution.

The remarkable expansion of industry and the economy made its effects felt in the field of economic theory which greatly flourished in the period. Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations (1776) was a seminal book in the development of laissez faire policies. It advocated no interference from the government in economic activities and supported the idea that efficiency and profit are absolute goods.

The precise meaning of Romanticism and of several of its key concepts are matters for disagreement. But the four central elements were perhaps:

- the stress on imagination and on individual experience;

- the conception of the artist as an original creator free from any neo-classical control by models and rules;

- the notion of nature as a living organic structure and as a medium for conveying fundamental spiritual truths as well as the importance attached to natural scenery.

- a distinctive style which in literature included widespread use of imagery,symbolism and myth.