Introduction
From the 1850s, railways, steamships and the electric telegraph allowed Britain and the scattered nations of her Empire to increase cooperation. Even better, said colonial administrator and historian Sir Charles Lucas, such innovations came too late for politicians in London to use them to tighten their control.
QUEEN Victoria’s reign was marked in a pre-eminent degree by the triumphal progress of science. When she came to the throne, modern scientific invention was in its infancy; when she died, it was dominating the world. When Lord Durham went on his mission to Canada in 1838,* the year after the Queen’s accession, there was but one small railway in Canada, and none in any other of the Queen’s dominions beyond the seas.* The same year saw the beginning of regular steam communication between Great Britain and America.*
It was only in 1837 that Cooke and Wheatstone took out their patent for an electric telegraph.* The first submarine cable between Great Britain and America was not laid till 1858, and some years passed before the communication was successfully established. No steamer ran from England to Australia till 1852.* There was no direct telegraph line to Australia until 1872, and none to South Africa prior to 1879, the news of the disaster at Isandhlwana in January of that year* being brought by ship to the nearest telegraph station, which was in the Cape Verde Islands.*
John George Lambton (1792-1840), 1st Earl of Durham, went to Canada to report on moves towards the unification of its various provinces, and self-government. His recommendations formed the basis of the British North America Act of 1867 that granted self-government to the Dominion of Canada. See Defective Democracy.
The Champlain and Saint Lawrence Railroad, near Montreal, was opened in 1836. India’s First Railway, from Bombay to Thane, opened in 1853. The first passenger-carrying inter-city line in England was The Liverpool and Manchester Railway, which opened in 1830.
Steam-powered ships had made the journey before, but the first purpose-built steam-powered transatlantic passenger liner was the SS Great Western, designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel and built in Bristol. She arrived in New York on April 23rd, 1838.
Together with Sir William Fothergill Cooke (1806-1879), Sir Charles Wheatstone (1802-1875) subsequently founded the Electric Telegraph Company, the world’s first public telegraph company, in 1846. Wheatstone had also invented the English concertina back in 1829.
The SS Great Britain left Liverpool for Melbourne and Sydney on August 21, 1852, and arrived in Australia on November 12th. SS Great Western’s historic Atlantic crossing had carried only a handful of passengers after a news of a fire in the engine room caused dozens of cancellations; happily, no such ill luck struck the SS Great Britain, which carried 143 crew and 630 passengers to the other side of the world.
The Battle of Isandlwana on January 22nd, 1879, was one of the early engagements of the short Anglo-Zulu War. The fighting saw some 22,000 Zulu warriors inflict an unprecedented defeat on about 1,350 British and Native troops; a small contingent at nearby Rorke’s Drift held out against the odds in a heroic defence that drew eleven Victoria Crosses. The British regrouped and overwhelmed the Zulus at Kambula on 29th March, taking the capital Ulundi from King Cetewayo on July 4th despite his offer of peace.
An archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean some 440 miles off the coast of Senegal, northwest Africa.
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