The Age of Reform, 1815-1870

Book excerpt: Between Waterloo and Gladstone's first ministry, Britain underwent a series of rapid and complex changes. At home, repression gave way to reform of the franchise, local government, education, poor relief, and the factory and legal systems. Further agitation arose in the 1840s over the Corn Laws, the People's Charter, and the Irish Question. By the 1860s, Britain was able to bask in the glow of the mid-Victorian supremacy forged by its economic might and the foreign policy pursued by Castlereagh, Canning, and Palmerston, which maintained the balance of power and extended the colonial empire. Authoritative and incisive, this newly paperbacked volume in the Oxford History of England is a classic study of Britain in the ascendant.