67-460: Osterley Park is a Georgian country estate in west London , which straddles the London boroughs of Ealing and Hounslow . Originally dating from the 1570s, the estate contains a number of Grade I and II listed buildings , with the park listed as Grade II*. The main building (Osterley House) was remodelled by Robert Adam between 1761 and 1765. The National Trust took charge of Osterley in 1991, and
134-520: A Conservative MP for Shrewsbury ). He was educated at Eton College before attending Christ Church, Oxford . Upon the death of his father at Middleton Park in December 1923, he succeeded as the 9th Earl of Jersey and inherited nearly 20,000 acres of land in England. Lord Jersey was a clerk with Glyn, Mills & Co. in 1932 and served as chairman of Wallace Brothers Sassoon Bank (taken over by
201-544: A World War II flying ace, before her death in 1996. His third and last wife was Bianca Luciana Adriana Mottironi (d. 2005), whom he married on 16 October 1947. She was the eldest daughter of furniture maker Enrico Mottironi of Via Goffredo Casalis in Turin , Italy. They had three children: Lord Jersey moved to Radier Manor in Jersey, where he lived with his third wife until his death on 9 August 1998. As his eldest son George died of
268-461: A growing evangelical, revivalist faction, the "Low Church". Its leaders included William Wilberforce and Hannah More . It reached the upper class through the Clapham Sect . It did not seek political reform, but rather the opportunity to save souls through political action by freeing slaves, abolishing the duel, prohibiting cruelty to children and animals, stopping gambling, and avoiding frivolity on
335-535: A large and powerful Royal Navy, which not only protected the British colonies but threatened the colonies of the other empires, and sometimes seized them. The colonies were captive markets for British industry, and the goal was to enrich the mother country. Most of the companies earned good profits, and enormous personal fortunes were created in India, but there was one major fiasco that caused heavy losses. The South Sea Bubble
402-745: A personal relationship with Christ through Bible reading, regular prayer, and especially the revival experience. Wesley himself preached 52,000 times, calling on men and women to "redeem the time" and save their souls. Wesley always operated inside the Church of England, but at his death, his followers set up outside institutions that became the Methodist Church . It stood alongside the traditional Nonconformist churches, Presbyterians, Congregationalist, Baptists, Unitarians, and Quakers. The Nonconformist churches, however, were less influenced by revivalism. The Church of England remained dominant in England but it had
469-399: A share to £1,000, with insiders making huge paper profits. The Bubble collapsed overnight, ruining many speculators. Investigations showed bribes had reached into high places—even to the king. The future prime minister Robert Walpole managed to wind it down with minimal political and economic damage, although some suffering extreme loss fled to exile or committed suicide. The beginning of
536-555: A year or more. This would eventually lead to the basis for the acquisition and spread of art collections back to England as well as fashions and paintings from Italy. The custom also helped popularise the macaroni style that was soon to become fashionable at the time. It was a time of immense social change in Britain, with the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution which began the process of intensifying class divisions , and
603-426: Is highly unusual, and it differs greatly in style from the original construction. One side is left almost open and is spanned by an Ionic pedimented screen, which is approached by a broad flight of steps and leads to a central courtyard, which is at piano nobile level. Adam's neoclassical interiors are among his most notable sequences of rooms. Horace Walpole described the drawing room as "worthy of Eve before
670-491: Is sometimes still referred to as such; see Georgian Poetry . George Child Villiers, 9th Earl of Jersey George Francis Child-Villiers, 9th Earl of Jersey (15 February 1910 – 9 August 1998), was an English peer and banker from the Villiers family . Lord Jersey gave one of the family seats, Osterley Park , to the British nation in the late 1940s. He was the son of George Child-Villiers, 8th Earl of Jersey , and
737-399: Is typically used in the contexts of social and political history and architecture . The term Augustan literature is often used for Augustan drama , Augustan poetry and Augustan prose in the period 1700–1740s. The term Augustan refers to the acknowledgement of the influence of Latin literature from the ancient Roman Republic . The term Georgian era is not applied to the time of
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#1733085652600804-722: The Home Guard ) when the 9th Earl, a friend of publisher Sir Edward Hulton , allowed writer and military journalist Captain Tom Wintringham to establish the first Home Guard training school (which Hulton sponsored) at the park in May–June 1940. It included teaching the theory and practice of modern mechanical warfare, guerilla-warfare techniques and street-fighting techniques, making use of some estate workers' houses that had been scheduled for demolition. Painter Roland Penrose taught camouflaging here, an extension of work he had developed with
871-788: The North American colonies (which became the United States during the period) and other parts of the British Empire . In England, the evangelical movement inside and outside the Church of England gained strength in the late 18th and early 19th century. The movement challenged the traditional religious sensibility that emphasised a code of honour for the upper class, and suitable behaviour for everyone else, together with faithful observances of rituals. John Wesley (1703–1791) and his followers preached revivalist religion, trying to convert individuals to
938-966: The Standard Chartered Bank in 1976). He fought in World War II , gaining the rank of Major in the Royal Artillery of the Territorial Army . The 9th Earl was responsible for the remodelling of the family seat, Middleton Park in Oxfordshire, and employed Edwin Lutyens as an architect. When he tried to give Middleton to the National Trust, they refused on the grounds that the house had been remodelled by Lutyens – whose houses they now seek particularly. The 9th Earl gave Osterley Park in Hounslow to
1005-811: The Tower of London and overthrow the government. This too was thwarted, with the conspirators executed or transported to Australia. Historians have long explored the importance of the Scottish Enlightenment, as well as the American Enlightenment, while debating the very existence of the English Enlightenment. English historian Peter Gay argues that the Scottish Enlightenment "was a small and cohesive group of friends – David Hume, Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, and others – who knew one another intimately and talked to one another incessantly". Education
1072-555: The humanist and rationalist outlook of the European Enlightenment of the same time period, the thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment asserted the importance of human reason combined with a rejection of any authority that could not be justified by reason. In Scotland, the Enlightenment was characterised by a thoroughgoing empiricism and practicality where the chief values were improvement, virtue, and practical benefit for
1139-422: The 1640s and 1650s saw a revived economy characterised by growth in manufacturing, the elaboration of financial and credit instruments, and the commercialisation of communication. The gentry found time for leisure activities, such as horse racing and bowling. In the high culture important innovations included the development of a mass market for music, increased scientific research, and an expansion of publishing. All
1206-783: The 1791 Priestley Riots in Birmingham, the mob targeted Dissenters, including the prominent Radical Joseph Priestley . The Black Act of 1723 , sponsored by Robert Walpole, strengthened the criminal code for the benefit of the upper class. It specified over 200 capital crimes, many with intensified punishment. The crime of arson, for example, was expanded to include of burning or the threat of burning haystacks. The legal rights of defendants were something different from today. For example, suspects who refused to surrender within 40 days could be summarily judged guilty and sentenced to execution if apprehended. Local villages were punished if they failed to find, prosecute and convict alleged criminals, due to
1273-537: The Countess obtained a divorce from him in London in 1937, they were the parents of one child: A week after his divorce was finalized, Lord Jersey married American actress Virginia Cherrill on 30 July 1937 at the Chelsea Register Office . She was the ex-wife of actor Cary Grant and daughter of James E. Cherrill. They divorced in 1946 without having had children together. She later married Florian Martini,
1340-623: The Georgian era is also often extended to include the relatively short reign of William IV , which ended with his death in 1837. The subperiod that is the Regency era is defined by the regency of George IV as Prince of Wales during the illness of his father George III. The transition to the Victorian era was characterized in religion, social values, and the arts by a shift in tone away from rationalism and toward romanticism and mysticism. The term Georgian
1407-606: The Georgian era witnessed rioting by Jacobite and High Church mobs in protest against the Hanoverian succession and which included attacks on the Dissenters ' places of worship. These included the 1714 coronation riots , which occurred on the day of George I's coronation, and the riots of 1715 . In response, Parliament passed the Riot Act , which granted the authorities greater powers to put down rioting. Although religious toleration
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#17330856526001474-524: The Government a petition. The Luddites destroyed and damaged machinery in the industrial north-west of England. The Peterloo Massacre in 1819 began as a protest rally which saw 60,000 people gathering to protest about their living standards, but was quelled by military action and saw eleven people killed and 400 wounded. The Cato Street Conspiracy of 1820 sought to blow up the Cabinet and then move on to storm
1541-548: The Hon. Margaret Elizabeth (daughter of William Leigh, 2nd Baron Leigh ). Among his extended Villiers family were aunts Lady Margaret Child Villiers (wife of Walter Rice, 7th Baron Dynevor ), Lady Mary Julia Child Villiers (wife of Thomas Pakenham, 5th Earl of Longford ) and Lady Beatrice Child Villiers (wife of Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany ). His maternal grandparents were Francis Needham, 3rd Earl of Kilmorey , and Ellen Constance Baldock (a daughter of Edward Holmes Baldock ,
1608-521: The Netherlands overwhelmed Britain, which stood alone without allies. The loss of the 13 American Colonies was a national disaster. Commentators at home and abroad speculated on the end of Britain as a great power . In Europe, the wars with France dragged on for nearly a quarter of a century, 1793–1815. Britain organised coalition after coalition, using its superb financial system to subsidise infantry forces, and built up its Navy to maintain control of
1675-618: The Sabbath; they read the Bible every day. All souls were equal in God's view, but not all bodies, so evangelicals did not challenge the hierarchical structure of English society. As R. J. Morris noted in his 1983 article "Voluntary Societies and British Urban Elites, 1780-1850," "[m]id-eighteenth-century Britain was a stable society in the sense that those with material and ideological power were able to defend this power in an effective and dynamic manner," but "in
1742-662: The West Indies. China would be next on the agenda. Other powers set up similar monopolies on a much smaller scale; only the Netherlands emphasized trade as much as England. Mercantilism was the basic policy imposed by Britain on its colonies. Mercantilism meant that the government and the merchants became partners with the goal of increasing political power and private wealth, to the exclusion of other empires. The government protected its merchants—and kept others out—by trade barriers, regulations, and subsidies to domestic industries in order to maximise exports from and minimise imports to
1809-484: The culture had accepted political liberalism, philosophical empiricism and religious toleration of the sort that intellectuals on the continent had to fight for against powerful odds. The coffee-house culture provided an ideal venue for enlightened conversation. Furthermore, England rejected the collectivism of the continent, and emphasized the improvement of individuals as the main goal of enlightenment. The British sponsored numerous scientists who made major discoveries in
1876-527: The demise of classical architecture. Victorians typically were disapproving of the times of the previous era. By the late 19th century, the "Georgian era" was a byword for a degenerate culture. Charles Abbey in 1878 argued that the Church of England: Note: In the twentieth century, the period 1910–1936 was informally called the Georgian Era during the reign of George V (following the Edwardian Era ), and
1943-531: The emergence of rival political parties like the Whigs and Tories . In rural areas, the Agricultural Revolution saw huge changes to the movement of people and the decline of small communities, the growth of the cities and the beginnings of an integrated transportation system but, nevertheless, as rural towns and villages declined and work became scarce there was a huge increase in emigration to Canada,
2010-668: The emergence of the Gothic Revival style, which hearkened back to a supposed golden age of building design. The flowering of the arts was most vividly shown in the emergence of the Romantic poets, principally through Samuel Taylor Coleridge , William Wordsworth , Percy Bysshe Shelley , William Blake , John Keats , Lord Byron and Robert Burns . Their work ushered in a new era of poetry, characterised by vivid and colourful language, evocative of elevating ideas and themes. The paintings of Thomas Gainsborough , Sir Joshua Reynolds and
2077-441: The estate passed into the Villiers family . In 1819, George Villiers changed his surname to Child Villiers. George Child Villiers, 9th Earl of Jersey , opened Osterley to the public in 1939 after having received many requests from people wishing to see its historic interior. He justified his decision by saying that it was "sufficient answer that he did not live in it and that many others wished to see it". Some 12,000 people visited
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2144-471: The exact ending, with the deaths of George IV in 1830 or William IV in 1837 as the usual marker. In most social and cultural trends, the timing varied. The emergence of Romanticism and literature began as early as the 1780s, but religious changes took much longer and were incomplete until around a century later. The 1830s saw important developments such as the emergence of the Oxford Movement in religion and
2211-736: The fall ". The rooms are characterised by elaborate but restrained plasterwork, rich, highly varied colour schemes, and a degree of coordination between decor and furnishings unusual in English neoclassical interiors. Notable rooms include the entrance hall, which has large semi-circular alcoves at each end, and the Etruscan dressing room, which Adam said was inspired by the " Etruscan " vases (as they were then regarded, now recognised as Greek ) in Sir William Hamilton's collection , illustrations of which had recently been published. Adam also designed some of
2278-588: The footpaths and enjoy the woodland of the surrounding park at no cost. A weekly 5k Parkrun takes place in the park. The house saw its latest restoration from 2018 to 2021. This repaired structural deterioration and discolouring of the external brickwork. Georgian era The Georgian era was a period in British history from 1714 to c. 1830–1837 , named after the Hanoverian kings George I , George II , George III and George IV . The definition of
2345-505: The former Lady Cynthia Almina Constance Mary Needham. He had three younger siblings, Lady Joan Child Villiers (wife of David Colville ), Edward Mansel Child Villiers (who married Barbara Mary Frampton and, secondly, to Princess Maria Gloria Pignatelli Aragona Cortez, only daughter of Prince Antonia Pignatelli Aragona Cortez, Duke of Terranova ), and Lady Ann Child Villiers (the wife of Maj. Alexander Henry Elliot). His paternal grandparents were Victor Child Villiers, 7th Earl of Jersey , and
2412-414: The furniture, including the opulent domed state bed, which is still in the house. Robert Child's only daughter, Sarah , married John Fane, 10th Earl of Westmorland , in 1782. When Child died two months later, his will placed his vast holdings, including Osterley, in trust for any second-to-be born grandchild. This proved to be Lady Sarah Fane , who was born in 1785. Child's will kept his property out of
2479-561: The hands of John Fane, his son-in-law. Under the doctrine of coverture then in force, if Child had given his daughter more than a life interest in any property, Fane would have had control of it. Fane had eloped with Child's daughter to Gretna Green , as Child had not consented to the marriage. Child had wished his daughter to marry someone willing to take on the Child surname and ensure its continuation. Child's eventual heiress, Lady Sarah Fane, married George Villiers in 1804 and, having children,
2546-528: The homeland from invasion) was building a worldwide trading network for its merchants, manufacturers, shippers and financiers. This required a hegemonic Royal Navy so powerful that no rival could sweep its ships from the world's trading routes, or invade the British Isles. The London government enhanced the private sector by incorporating numerous privately financed London-based companies for establishing trading posts and opening import-export businesses across
2613-959: The house and its park to the National Trust . The furniture was sold to the Victoria & Albert Museum . In 1947, Lord Jersey moved to the island of Jersey , taking with him many pictures from the collection at Osterley. Some were destroyed in a warehouse fire on the island soon after. Lord Jersey assisted the Ministry of Works and the V&;A in their restoration of the house to its present late-18th-century state. The National Trust took charge of Osterley in 1991. The house has enjoyed loans and gifts from Lord Jersey, including items of silver, porcelain, furniture and miniatures. The trust commissioned portraits of Lord Jersey and his wife by Howard J. Morgan , which hang upstairs. In 2014, William Villiers, 10th Earl of Jersey ,
2680-473: The house and park are open to visitors. The original building on this site was a manor house built in the 1570s for banker Sir Thomas Gresham , who purchased the manor of Osterley in 1562. The "faire and stately brick house" was completed in 1576. It is known that Queen Elizabeth I visited. The stable block from that period remains at Osterley Park. Gresham, the founder of the Royal Exchange , also bought
2747-492: The house during its first month of opening. Villiers staged a series of exhibitions of artworks by living artists in the top-floor rooms to contrast with the 18th-century interiors on the ground floor. He also planned to create an arboretum in the grounds, although that never came to fruition. The grounds of Osterley Park were used for the training of the first members of the Local Defence Volunteers (forerunners of
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2814-634: The increase in crime at the time. With the ending of the War with France in 1815, Great Britain entered a period of greater economic depression and political uncertainty, characterised by social discontent and unrest. The Radical political party published a leaflet called The Political Register , also known as "The Two Penny Trash" to its rivals. The so-called March of the Blanketeers saw 400 spinners and weavers march from Manchester to London in March 1817 to hand
2881-775: The individual and society as a whole. Among the fields that rapidly advanced were philosophy, economics, history, architecture, and medicine. Leaders included Francis Hutcheson , David Hume , Adam Smith , Dugald Stewart , Thomas Reid , William Robertson , Henry Home, Lord Kames , Adam Ferguson , John Playfair , Joseph Black and James Hutton . The very existence of an English Enlightenment has been debated by scholars. The majority of textbooks and standard surveys make no room for an English Enlightenment. Some European surveys include England, others ignore it but do include coverage of such major intellectuals as Joseph Addison , Edward Gibbon , John Locke , Isaac Newton , Alexander Pope and Joshua Reynolds . According to Derek Hirst ,
2948-739: The most prominent of the many explorers and geographers using the resources of the Royal Navy to develop the Empire and make many scientific discoveries, especially in Australia and the Pacific. Instead of trying to recover the lost colonies in North America, the British built up in Asia a largely new Second British Empire. That new empire flourished during the Victorian and Edwardian eras which were to follow. The era
3015-444: The nation in the late 1940s; he said of that house, "it took a trained staff of 12 to bring me a boiled egg in the morning, and the egg was always cold by the time it got to me!" Lord Jersey was married three times and twice divorced. He married his first wife, Patricia Richards (1914–2017) at St Margaret's, Westminster on 12 January 1932. She was the only child of Kenneth Richards, of Cowcumbala, New South Wales , Australia. Before
3082-448: The neighbouring Manor of Boston in 1572. During the late 17th century, the estate was owned by Nicholas Barbon , a developer who mortgaged it to Child's Bank and then died in debt around 1698. As a result of a mortgage default, by the early 1710s, the estate came into the ownership of Sir Francis Child , the founder of Child's Bank. In 1761, Sir Francis's grandsons, Francis and Robert , employed Scottish architect Robert Adam (who
3149-543: The paintbrush in avant-garde paintings to protect the modesty of his lover, Elizabeth 'Lee' Miller (married to Aziz E. Bey). Maj. Wilfred Vernon taught the art of mixing home-made explosives, and his explosives store can still be seen at the rear of the house, while Canadian Bert "Yank" Levy , who had served under Wintringham in the Spanish Civil War , taught knife fighting and hand-to-hand combat . Despite winning world fame in newsreels and newspaper articles around
3216-415: The present Earl, arranged a ten-year loan to Osterley of portraits of the Child family. The pictures that are part of the loan include Allan Ramsay 's portrait of Francis Child (1758), and George Romney 's portrait of Francis's brother, Robert . The house and small formal gardens are open to the public. They account for 30,000 paying visitors per year. Many hundreds of thousands of visitors per year walk
3283-887: The primary enemy. Major episodes included the Seven Years' War , known in America as the French and Indian War (1754–1763), the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), the French Revolutionary Wars (1792–1802), the Irish Rebellion of 1798 , and the Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815). The British won most of the wars except for the American Revolution, where the combined weight of the United States, France, Spain and
3350-490: The realm. The government had to fight smuggling, which became a favourite American technique in the 18th century to circumvent the restrictions on trading with the French, Spanish or Dutch. The goal of mercantilism was to run trade surpluses, so that gold and silver would pour into London. The government took its share through duties and taxes, with the remainder going to merchants in Britain. The government spent much of its revenue on
3417-615: The seas. Victory over Napoleon at the Battle of Trafalgar (1805) and the Battle of Waterloo (1815) under Admiral Lord Nelson and the Duke of Wellington brought a sense of triumphalism and political reaction. The expansion of empire in Asia was primarily the work of the British East India Company , especially under the leadership of Robert Clive . Captain James Cook was perhaps
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#17330856526003484-418: The small laboratories. Joseph Priestley investigated electricity. Chemist Henry Cavendish identified hydrogen in 1772. Daniel Rutherford isolated nitrogen in 1774, while Priestley discovered oxygen and ammonia. Antiquarians and archaeologists mapped the past. In medicine, in 1717 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu introduced inoculation against smallpox to Britain, and by 1740 it was in wide usage. Guy's Hospital
3551-458: The trends were discussed in depth at the newly established coffee houses . Education was also a priority in England. English institutions expanded rapdly, including the formation of the Royal Society , which is the oldest national scientific institution in the world. Roy Porter argues that the reason for the neglect was the assumption that the movement was primarily French-inspired, that it
3618-664: The twenty years after 1780, this consensus structure was broken." Anglican Evangelicalism thus, as historian Lisa Wood has argued in her book Modes of Discipline: Women, Conservatism, and the Novel After the French Revolution , functioned as a tool of ruling-class social control, buffering the discontent that in France had inaugurated a revolution; yet it contained within itself the seeds for challenge to gender and class hierarchies. The Georgian period saw continual warfare, with France
3685-436: The two 20th-century British kings of this name, George V and George VI . Those periods are simply referred to as Georgian . Georgian society and its preoccupations were well portrayed in the novels of writers such as Daniel Defoe , Jonathan Swift , Samuel Richardson , Henry Fielding , Laurence Sterne , Mary Shelley and Jane Austen , characterised by the architecture of Robert Adam , John Nash and James Wyatt and
3752-637: The world (particularly in the US), the school was disapproved of by the War Office and Winston Churchill , and it was taken over in September 1940. Closed in 1941, its staff and courses were reallocated to other newly opened War Office -approved Home Guard schools. After the Second World War, Lord Jersey approached Middlesex County Council , which had shown interest in buying the estate, but eventually decided to give
3819-400: The world. Each was given a monopoly of trade to the specified geographical region. The first enterprise was the Muscovy Company set up in 1555 to trade with Russia. Other prominent enterprises included the East India Company , and the Hudson's Bay Company in Canada. The Company of Royal Adventurers Trading to Africa had been set up in 1662 to trade in gold, ivory and slaves in Africa; it
3886-535: The young J. M. W. Turner and John Constable illustrated the changing world of the Georgian period – as did the work of designers like Capability Brown , the landscape designer . Fine examples of distinctive Georgian architecture are Edinburgh's New Town , Georgian Dublin , Grainger Town in Newcastle upon Tyne , the Georgian Quarter of Liverpool and much of Bristol and Bath . The music of John Field , Handel , Haydn , Clementi , Johann Christian Bach , William Boyce , Mozart , Beethoven and Mendelssohn
3953-465: Was a business enterprise that exploded in scandal. The South Sea Company was a private business corporation supposedly set up much like the other trading companies, with a focus on South America. Its actual purpose was to renegotiate previous high-interest government loans amounting to £31 million through market manipulation and speculation. It issued stock four times in 1720 that reached about 8,000 investors. Prices kept soaring every day, from £130
4020-422: Was a priority in Scotland, both at the local level and especially in four universities. The Enlightenment culture was based on close readings of new books, and intense discussions that took place daily at such intellectual gathering places in Edinburgh as The Select Society and, later, The Poker Club as well as within Scotland's ancient universities ( St Andrews , Glasgow , Edinburgh and Aberdeen ). Sharing
4087-450: Was extensive by the standards of continental Europe, hostility to religious minorities was widespread in Britain during the eighteenth century and sometimes expressed itself in rioting. The Jewish Naturalisation Act 1753 was repealed a year after it had been passed because of widespread opposition and the 1780 Gordon Riots in London were directed against Catholics after the Papists Act 1778 removed some of their legal disabilities. During
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#17330856526004154-421: Was founded in 1721; the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh in 1729; Queen Charlotte's maternity hospital in 1739 and the Middlesex Hospital in 1745. Asylums for the mentally ill were established, notably Bethel Hospital in Norwich (1713); a ward for incurable lunatics at Guy's Hospital (1728); and lunatic hospitals in Manchester (1766) and York in (1777)—York was the first to be called an asylum. Historians debate
4221-408: Was just emerging as one of the most fashionable architects in Britain) to remodel the house. When Francis Child died in 1763, the project was taken up by his brother and heir, Robert Child, for whom the interiors were created. The house is of red brick with white stone details and is approximately square, with turrets in the four corners. Adam's design, which incorporates some of the earlier structure,
4288-467: Was largely a-religious or anti-clerical, and it stood in outspoken defiance to the established order. Porter admits that after the 1720s, England could claim thinkers to equal Diderot, Voltaire or Rousseau. Indeed, its leading intellectuals, such as Edward Gibbon , Edmund Burke and Samuel Johnson were all quite conservative and supported the standing order. Porter says the reason was that Enlightenment had come early to England, and had succeeded so that
4355-482: Was prosperous as entrepreneurs extended the range of their business around the globe. By the 1720s Britain was one of the most prosperous countries in the world, and Daniel Defoe boasted: While the other major powers were primarily motivated towards territorial gains, and protection of their dynasties (such as the Habsburg and Bourbon dynasties, and the House of Hohenzollern ), Britain had a different set of primary interests. Its main diplomatic goal (besides protecting
4422-482: Was re-established as the Royal African Company in 1672 and focused on the slave trade. British involvement in each of the four major wars, 1740 to 1783, paid off handsomely in terms of trade. Even the loss of the 13 colonies was made up by a very favourable trading relationship with the new United States of America. British gained dominance in the trade with India, and largely dominated the highly lucrative slave, sugar, and commercial trades originating in West Africa and
4489-461: Was some of the most popular in England at that time. The height of the Grand Tour coincided with the 18th century and is associated with Georgian high society. This custom saw young upper-class Englishmen travelling to Italy by way of France and the Netherlands for intellectual and cultural purposes. Notable historian Edward Gibbon remarked of the Grand Tour as useful for intellectual self-improvement. The journey and stay abroad would usually take
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