Overview
Britain became the workshop of the world: railways spread from the 1830s, the Great Exhibition of 1851 displayed industrial supremacy, and cities grew explosively — with slums, cholera, and then sanitation and factory reform in response.
Key developments
The empire expanded across India (Crown rule from 1858, Victoria Empress of India from 1876), Africa, and the Pacific. Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859) shook Victorian thought, and successive Reform Acts (1867, 1884) widened the vote while Gladstone and Disraeli alternated in power.
End and transition
Victoria died in January 1901 after nearly 64 years on the throne. The Edwardian decade that followed carried Victorian confidence toward the rupture of the First World War.