Victorian Era (the United Kingdom)
(1837 to 1901)
What happened?
During the first Industrial Revolution, political reform and social change, Charles Dickens, Charles Darwin, a railway boom and the first telegraph and telephone, the 63-year Victorian Era marked the reign of Queen Victoria of England. As cities grew and expanded, long and regimented factory hours, the start of the Crimean War and Jack the Ripper, the rural life demised.
At age 18 following the death of her uncle, William IV, Victoria ascended the throne. She ruled during one of the greatest eras of Britain’s history. One-fourth of the global population owed allegiance to the queen. The Victorian Era followed the Gregorian Era and was succeeded by the Edwardian Era.
A lot of innovations and events helped defining the Victorian Era. The period is seen as a time of prosperity in Great Britain. Due to the benefits of the British Empire’s overseas territories and the industrial developments within Great Britain, a well-bred middle class emerged.
The Victorian Era witnessed resistance to the rationalism that defined the Gregorian period. It saw an increasing turn towards romanticism and even mysticism regarding religion, social values, and arts. Modern medicine saw light due to the adoption of the germ theory of disease and pioneering research in epidemiology. The doctors started moving away from tradition and mysticism towards science-based research.
The two main political parties remained the Liberals (or Whigs) and the Conservatives. The Labour Party had formed by the end of the era as a distinct political entity. The political agenda was increasingly liberal. There were shifts in the direction of political reform and social reform. The population of England and Scotland almost doubled between 1851 and 1901. In Ireland however, the population decreased sharply due to the emigration and the Great Famine about 1850. Thanks to educational reforms, the British population became increasingly well-educated towards the end of the era.
Britain’s relations with other Great Powers were driven by the colonial antagonism of the Great Game with Russia. It climaxed during the Crimean War, from 1853 to 1856. Britain embarked on global imperial expansion, particularly in Asia and Africa. The British Empire became the largest empire in history. Apart from the Crimean War, Britain was not involved in any other armed conflict with another major power.
Anglo-Zulu War
± 1879
The Anglo-Zulu War was fought in 1879 between the British and the Zulus. Like the Constitution of Canada of 1867, it was thought that similar political efforts, combined with military campaigns, could succeed with the African kingdoms, Boer republics, and tribal areas of South Africa. To carry out these plans, Sir Bartl Frere was sent to South Africa as High Commissioner. The armed independent states of the South African Republic and the Kingdom of Zululand were among the obstacles. Frere deliberately sent an untenable ultimatum to the Zulu king Cetshwavo. After the rejection, troops of Lord Chelmsford invaded Zululand. The war lasted 5 months and is notable for some particularly bloody battles, including an opening victory by the Zulus at the Battle of Isandlwana. A small British force successfully defended Rorke's Drift against a large Zulu force. The British won the war and ended the Zulu nation's dominance in the region.
Lord Chelmsford planned to invade Zululand with three columns. The Battle of Isandlwana was the first engagement of the Anglo-Zulu War. A Zulu army of about 20.000 fighters attacked part of the British main column, of about 1800 troops and 400 civilians. The Zulus had spears, shields, and some outdated guns. The British were armed with the modern Martini-Henry rifle and two mountain guns, as well as a Hale missile battery. More than 1300 British were killed, the Zulu army suffered between 1000 and 3000 dead. The British army had suffered its first defeat against a native enemy who possessed inferior weapons.
On another location, the British failed to expel the fugitive Zulus in Hlobane. Meanwhile, the British had also lost at Isandlwana and so could not count on reinforcements in Hlobane. The men near Hlobane were on their own, and the great Zulu army arrived. The British tried to withdraw, but it was a dangerous undertaking and many casualties occurred. The Battle of Isandlwana led them to take a much more aggressive approach and there was no possibility of a negotiated peace.
Interest
± 1881
In early agricultural societies of Ancient Near East, goods were lent. Part of the proceeds was settled as interest. Loans were mainly intended to meet daily needs. Earning from other people's misery did not make anyone popular, the rich who grew richer at the expense of their distressed fellow human beings.
The resistance to interest is as old as borrowing itself. Cyrus the Great (590-523), founder of the Persian Empire, had people who charged interest burned.
Philosopher Aristotle (384-322), in Ancient Greece, called money trading unnatural. Coins do not give birth to coins, because money is sterile.
Rejection received strong support from a religious angle. In the books of Moses, taking interest is rejected as sinful. For a good conscience, the ban on interest was interpreted as a prohibition against asking for interest from fellow believers. Interest prohibition was taken over by Christianity. Jesus had also done this.
Ambrose (339-397), church father in Milan, Italy, during Classical antiquity, compares interest to robbery.
Asking for interest remained taboo during the Dark Ages. Bible texts were unambiguous. Usury and interest were still synonymous at that time. Christian thinkers align interest and theft.
The Second Council of the Lateran in 1139 spoke in disdain about the rapaciousness of the insatiable usurers. The strict ban on interest resulted in the European money trade falling into Jewish hands. They were not covered by ecclesiastical law. But reality is sometimes unruly. With the rise of trade, the need for money grew. The interest ban was slowly showing cracks. The Fourth Council of the Lateran in 1215 nuanced the official ecclesiastical view. It was allowed to ask interest, but not usurious interest. Money trading was now open to Christians. Italian Lombard traveled all over Western Europe. In the wake of traders and businessmen, Italian lenders moved from annual fair to annual fair. Their booth, a table with scales and bags of coins, is at the origin of our name "bank", which comes from the Italian word ‘banco’ or ‘banca’ for table. Together with the Jewish donors, the Lombard introduced the money trade in many regions. In larger trading cities, permanent banks of loans arose, called "lombards" (= pawnshops) after the Lombard. The little man in need of money could also go there. Money was lent against collateral in the pawnshop. The extremely high interest that was demanded was a source of irritation and indignation. Money was scarce and interest rates could be as high as eighty percent.
The Biblical texts had not yet been forgotten in the Netherlands. The government regularly intervened and ordered the pawnshop to return all borrowed properties. In the year 1477 the city council ordered that all buildings that stood in the ‘Lombaerdt’ had to be repaid for the coming Shrove Tuesday without interest and costs. Rhe Town Hall of Amsterdam decided itself to set up a city loan bank in 1614 because high interest rates continued to cause problems.
Interest has become the most natural thing in the world and is even one of the cornerstones of the global economy. Only many Muslims believe that interest (riba) is forbidden by Muhammad. What to do with the mortgage interest when buying a house? They look for financial arrangements that are not called interest but boil down to the same thing. Interest is subject to a maximum in most countries. In the Netherlands and Belgium there is a ceiling of 15 percent. Usury has not been eliminated. In Great Britain, Johnny "Boy" Kiely was sentenced in 2009 to five years in prison to raise capital with the help of shady friends with loans at an interest rate sometimes as high as 2500 percent.
Caravan
± 1890
For a long time, you let it out of your mind to leave civilization for fun. Nature was hostile and dangerous. Romantics depicted nature about 1800 as good and immersing oneself in it was a spiritual experience. It is no coincidence that the origin of the caravan starts then. Romanticized gypsies set the example. Traveling with a house on wheels, you couldn't get closer to nature.
Traveling by car as a leisure activity. William Gordon Stables (1837-1910), naval surgeon and children's book writer, in Twyford, UK, is considered a pioneer. As a child he admired the carved wagons of the gypsies. He decided to make his childhood dream come true and had a wooden camper van built according to his own design in 1885. He named it "Land Yacht Wanderer". Stables undertook the 2.000 km round trip by car from his hometown of Twyford to Inverness, Scotland. It took him more than three months. Traveling in those days was still an adventure, he knew that like no other as a former marine. His regular luggage therefore included an old saber and a revolver.
The caravan was an expensive hobby in the United Kingdom that only the wealthy had. These enthusiasts saw themselves in the 20th century as "Gentlemen Gypsies", with an emphasis on the "gentleman". The necessary servants were taken along on the trips, such as a road explorer on horse or bicycle. Among the "bohemians," gypsy wagon rides were fashionable for a while. That reality was sometimes less idyllic, the British writer Evelyn Waugh found out. He called his holiday in a caravan near Oxford one of the worst of his life. The rain that came down steadily trickled into the car just as hard. Waugh fled into a church with his traveling companion. When the rain did not stop, both decided to leave the caravan and walk to Oxford, where they then drank a well-deserved chunk in one of the many bars.
The original camper van had two axles and was pulled by horses. After WWI the single-axle caravan appeared to hang behind a car. The English firm Eccles was the first to build fifty caravans in 1919. The European continent followed with the production of caravans.
The Dutch architect Franz Hausbrand (1900-1986) played a pioneering role in the Netherlands. He had a "Hauscar" built for himself according to his own design in 1929. Hausbrand even founded the Dutch camping club in 1937. The Dutch company Kip was founded in 1938 in Hoogeveen.
After the Second World War, Hausbrand continued to design caravans that he had made by body shops. Its popularity increased. Kip set the tone in the Netherlands after 1945.
In 1949, the traditional camper looked critically at the advent of the caravan. De Kampioen (= The Champion), the Dutch car driver's association magazine, wondered the following. Was this True Camping? There is a danger of camper sport that it degenerates into weekend cottages, where all the sense of sportsmanship, romance and tourism is lost. But the advance did not stop. The Constructam company in Temse, Belgium, was founded in 1958 and sets the tone in Belgium.
After 1960 Europe was under the influence of the leisure revolution, and the number of caravans increased. According to the newspaper 'de Courant' from Leeuwarden, the Netherlands, the caravan represented a feeling in 1965. The caravan makes the holidaymaker a truly free person.
Hausbrand announced in 1986 that the modern caravan was too luxurious for him. The pinnacle is the mobile home with all the luxury. In 2015, the Netherlands had almost half a million caravans. It is caravan land of Europe. Historian Peter-Eloy Staal claims that the Netherlands is not yet tired of camping and the caravan. On the one hand, he sees a path to primitive camping. On the other hand, a large group of people want more and more luxury. Two clear choices, but the real camper knows as the "Gentleman Gypsy" of the time: camping is a temporary abandonment of the joys of civilization.