Ronald
Period 3
1/9/13
Aristocrats vs. Prince Albert During the reign of Queen Victoria, the industrial age spurred. Victoria married Prince Albert, a man of German blood. During the reign of Queen Victoria, the English were not fond of foreigners being a major part of government. When Victoria married Albert, it was very much frowned upon by the people of England. He came from a not so wealthy family, and that was not very much appreciated by the English people. Albert was embraced socialist and liberal ideas and that was very much disliked by the English because they were not of equivalent governmental terms. England at the time had a strong constitution and a very strong, if not the strongest piece in industrialization making them feel superiority over others. Aristocrats were against Prince Albert because of his ethnicity, which was German, and his support of free trade.

The reason why Aristocrats dislike Albert because of his German background was because the people of England did not like outsiders. Geographically, England is isolated from other countries, and the closest countries to England would be, Scotland and Ireland. Because of those being the only remotely close countries to England it resulted in the English people not seeing people of different parts of Europe as often. And being the number one industrial power, they thought themselves as better than other countries, So when Albert became Prince after marrying Victoria, the people of England became bitter because they would have expected a wealthy English native to take the hand of Victoria in marriage, but this did not happen. The marriage of a foreigner resulted in no disrespect of Victoria, but mainly negativity towards Albert.

Albert’s support of free trade was very much looked down upon because that is not