History Trails. Victorian Britain.

Britain's world dominance

Throughout the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901), the United Kingdom was the world's leading power.
Its naval supremacy was, the strength of Britain's economy that underpinned this pre-eminence.
Britain had progressed from being what Napoleon dismissed as a 'nation of shopkeepers' and had become instead 'the workshop of the world'

Understanding 'laissez-faire'

Laissez-faire, a French term, means 'leave to do' or 'leave alone'. It relates to economic policies that rely on the power of unregulated markets to deliver the goods. people will develop habits of sturdy self-reliance, but if they are supported by the state, people will rapidly sink into a mode of dependency.
Samuel Smiles, the greatest propagandist of the self-help ideal, put it in 1859:
'Whatever is done for men or classes, to a certain extent takes away the stimulus and necessity of doing for themselves; and where men are subjected to over-guidance and over-government, the inevitable tendency is to render them comparatively helpless.'
It was to these ideals of self-help and sturdy independence that Margaret Thatcher looked when, as Britain's prime minister from 1979 to 1990, she sought to revive the country's flagging fortunes. She called for a return to 'Victorian values'
Thatcher also aimed to make Britain a more competitive trading nation. Here, she invoked the spirit of the Scottish political economist Adam Smith, whom she considered to be the high priest of free trade.