Ideologically, the Victorian era witnessed resistance to the rationalism that defined the Georgian period and an increasing turn towards romanticism and mysticism with regard to religion, social values, and arts.^[2] In international relations, the supremacy of the Royal Navy helped maintain a period of relative peace among the great powers (Pax Britannica) as well as economic, colonial, and industrial consolidation and expansion, a notable exception being the Crimean War (1853–56). Britain embarked on global imperial expansion, particularly in Asia and Africa, which made the British Empire the largest empire in history.

La Constitution ne connaît aucun changement important, après la dernière réforme parlementaire et électorale de 1832. Assainie par la lutte contre la corruption, la vie politique demeure l’apanage des propriétaires, d’un électorat qui correspond à quelque 5 p. 1 000 de la population et alors que le cens d’éligibilité écarte les moins fortunés.

These acquisitions were not uncontested. A number of colonial wars were fought and insurgencies put down as bloodily as the colonisers considered necessary. 

What, finally, of the Victorian political structure? It is easy to see that it was far from democratic. 

At the beginning of Victoria's reign, about a fifth of adult males were entitled to vote. That proportion increased, through parliamentary reform acts passed in 1867 and 1884, to one-third and two-thirds respectively. 

No women could legally vote in parliamentary elections until almost 18 years after Victoria's death - and the queen herself was no suffragist. Women did, however, play an increasingly influential role both in locally-elected school and poor law boards and in local government from the 1870s onwards.

If not democratic, the political system was becoming increasingly representative. By 1901, few argued - as had frequently been asserted against the Chartists in the 1830s and 1840s - that to allow working men to vote would be to cede power to an ignorant, insensate and unworthy majority. 

Victorian politicians increasingly learned how to 'trust the people'. They also noted how many among 'lower orders' could help themselves economically while improving themselves educationally. 

The working-class Victorian autodidact was an increasingly significant figure. His modest successes enabled his 'betters' to claim that Britain was a specially advanced, perhaps even a divinely favoured, nation. 

Britain managed to modernize its political system without succumbing to the political revolutions that afflicted virtually all of its European competitors. 

The quality of political debate in Victorian Britain, in newspapers and in both houses of parliament, was also very high. The struggle for political supremacy between William Gladstone and Benjamin Disraeli in the late 1860s and 1870s represents perhaps the most sophisticated political duel in the nation's history. 

During the Victorian era, then, the United Kingdom could plausibly be considered as the world's superpower. However, Germany and the United States had already begun to surpass its industrial capacity and Germany's naval build-up would shortly present a powerful challenge to long-held British supremacy. 

On the home front, the nation was only beginning to get to grips with widespread poverty while considerably more than half the adult population remained without a vote. Victorian supremacy by 1901 was only skin deep. 

Nineteenth-Century Britain: A Very Short Introduction by Christopher Harvie (Oxford Paperbacks, 2000)

A Companion to Nineteenth-Century Britain edited by Chris Williams (Blackwell Publishers, 2004)

The Victorians: An Age in Retrospect by John Gardiner (Hambledon Continuum, 2002)

The Forging of the Modern State: Early Industrial Britain, 1783 - 1870 by Eric J Evans (Longman, 2001)

Britain's Century, 1815 - 1905 by WD Rubinstein (Hodder Arnold, 1998)

The Mid-Victorian Generation, 1846 - 1886 by K Theodore Hoppen (Oxford University Press, 1998)

A New England: Peace and War, 1886 - 1918 by GR Searle (Oxford University Press, 2004)

The Victorian Underworld by Donald Thomas (John Murray, 1998)

Ornamentalism: How the British Saw Their Empire by David Cannadine (Penguin Books, 2002)