HIS 321LEC—Victorian History, 1832-1901

In 1851, when the Great Exhibition opened in the new Crystal Palace in London, Britain’s position as the pre-eminent great power in the world seemed unrivaled. The Crystal Palace was a massive glass structure that covered almost nineteen acres of ground and showcased some of the most spectacular examples of British ingenuity produced by a century of industrial growth in canals, railways, and factories. HIS 321 will look at both the self-congratulatory and hopeful world of Great Britain and the British empire during the reign of Queen Victoria as well the underside of that world that included new depths of Dickensian poverty, famine in Ireland and the grisly East End of Jack the Ripper. We will explore a range of themes, including: urbanization, class tensions, industrial change, imperialism, gender, socialism, rural nostalgia. In particular, the class will chart the rise of industrial wealth, the problems of urbanization, the expansion of the British empire, and the development of an interventionist state. EUR