The Victorian Era — The Empire at Its Zenith

In June 1837, a young girl became queen. Her name was Victoria, and she was just eighteen. A niece of the late King William IV, she was woken in the dead of night and told that she had become the sovereign of the United Kingdom. We cannot know how clearly the people of the time saw the dawn of an age in this girl’s accession. Yet as it turned out, the sixty-four years of her reign became the era in which Britain reached farther across the globe, and shone more richly, than at any other point in its history.

Later generations would call that age by her name: the Victorian era. Backed by the industrial might born of the Industrial Revolution, this island nation brought a quarter of the earth under its dominion and came to be called the empire on which the sun never sets — the very summit of its power. At the same time, it was the era in which the shadow of the domination and inequality that sustained that prosperity fell most deeply across the world.

The Glow of the Crystal Palace — A Festival of Prosperity and Science

An event that symbolized the confidence of the Victorian era was held in London’s Hyde Park in 1851: the first World’s Fair, popularly known as the Great Exhibition.

The venue was a vast structure assembled from nothing but iron and glass. From its sunlit form, people called it the Crystal Palace. The exhibition is said to have been conceived by the queen’s husband, Prince Albert. Around 14,000 exhibitors gathered from all over the world, and machines, crafts, and raw materials were displayed side by side. Steam engines, spinning machinery, precision industrial goods — they made plain to every eye the power of the first nation in the world to achieve industrialization.

On the first of May, Queen Victoria attended the opening ceremony together with Prince Albert. At the heart of the displays stood the industrial products of Britain itself. The nation called ‘the workshop of the world’ proudly showed off its wares to all.

Nineteenth-century Britain also reaped a rich harvest in science and culture. Darwin gave the world ‘On the Origin of Species,’ Dickens depicted the people of the city, and railway networks bound the land together. The seas of the world were held by the Royal Navy, and under that overwhelming maritime supremacy an age without major wars is said to have continued. This was later called the Pax Britannica — the peace brought by Britain. Modeled on the peace of the Roman Empire, the phrase carries the empire’s pride in believing itself the bearer of world order.

The Empire on Which the Sun Never Sets — A Dominion Spanning the World

Victorian Britain extended its territory on a global scale. Canada, Australia, New Zealand, vast regions of Africa, and lands across Asia — the dominion circled the earth, and because some part of the empire was always in daylight, it was called the empire on which the sun never sets.

The jewel said to crown that empire was India. At first it was not the state but a single company, the East India Company, that governed India. But in 1857, a great event erupted that shook that rule to its foundations: the Indian Rebellion.

The trigger for the rebellion was the discontent of the Indian mercenary soldiers (sepoys). A rumor that beef and pork fat was used in the cartridges of a new rifle wounded the faith of both Hindus and Muslims and set their anger ablaze. Yet at its root, it is said, lay a far deeper revolt against foreign domination itself. The rebellion spread across the land and became fierce fighting.

The process of suppression was utterly brutal. According to records, while British deaths numbered in the thousands, an enormous number of people on the Indian side are estimated to have lost their lives, including through the famines that followed. With this rebellion as the turning point, Britain ended rule by the East India Company, and in 1858 took the path of governing India directly through the government. Then in 1877, Queen Victoria assumed the title of Empress of India. The empire had reached its zenith.

The Underside of the Light — The Shadow of Domination and Inequality

The Victorian era cannot be told solely as a brilliant age of prosperity and progress. For as strong as its light was, its shadow was just as deep.

The wealth the empire brought flowed back to the home country. Yet in the colonies, there are said to have been many cases in which local societies and economies were remade to suit the convenience of the ruling nation, and the lives and dignity of the people were harmed. The violence accompanying the suppression of the Indian Rebellion, the wars of conquest across Africa, and the structure of domination that continued throughout the nineteenth century — that these left deep wounds on the people of those lands must be looked at fairly. While avoiding a one-sided judgment, the very fact of the harm done must be faced head-on.

The shadow lay not only across the seas. Within Britain itself, too, there were people left behind by prosperity.

Within the United Kingdom too there were deep fractures. In Ireland above all, the potato famine that continued from 1845 caused vast numbers of people to starve to death, or to depart for the New World. The criticism that the manner of British governance at the time deepened this catastrophe still remains as a question of history. The brighter the center of the empire shone, the longer the shadow that fell on its margins grew — the Victorian era was an age that held such a structure within it.

After the Zenith

In January 1901, Queen Victoria closed her life at the age of eighty-one. Her reign of sixty-four years had covered almost the whole of the nineteenth century. The people who had traveled by carriage when she ascended the throne lived, by the time of her death, in a world bound together by networks of railway and telegraph. So greatly had her age changed the world.

At this moment Britain was an empire without precedent in history, ruling a quarter of the earth. It ran at the cutting edge of science and industry, commanded the seas, and prided itself on bearing the order of the world. The light shone as strongly as it ever could.

Yet at that very zenith, the shadow too reached its greatest extent. The memory of domination and violence piled up in the colonies, the suffering borne by the workers at home and by Ireland — these were bound inseparably to the empire’s prosperity. Later generations would inherit both the greatness and the wrongs of this age.

And the twentieth century, which opened with the queen’s death, would become a century of trial for this vast empire. For in the twentieth century, two world wars would shake that vast empire to its very foundations.