9 - Reform

Summary

The period after 1815 is the least studied period in the history of Britain's relationship with Hanover. Historians seem to have assumed that knowledge of the impending end of union, issuing from different laws respecting female succession, reduced the relevance of dynastic union. But this eventuality could appear remote, and observers usually focused upon dynastic union's contemporary influence. This was most often detected in liberalism, the expansion of the right to participate in formal politics or the economy. George IV's extension of civil and political rights to Hanoverian Catholics in 1824 made it harder for him to resist similar measures in Britain; Hanoverian Catholics apparently benefited from the same double standard established for Quebec in 1774. Both precedents were of great interest to the activists who managed to procure equality for Catholic laymen in 1829. Just as Hanoverian developments influenced Catholic emancipation in Britain, Britain's reform act of 1832 influenced Hanover's constitution of the following year; both enfranchised middle-class men. Finally, Britain and Hanover reduced the legacy of coerced labor in 1833. Britain provided for the eventual abolition of slavery in its Caribbean colonies by a combination of compensation and apprenticeship, while Hanover abolished the last remnants of such commutation – seigneurial dues. Finally, Hanoverian reform occurred in the context of rule by the duke of Cambridge – especiallyafter his promotion to viceroy in 1831. The formal supercession of collegial by viceregal rule brought Hanover closer to British colonial forms. All of these developments informed imperial interpretations of the dynastic union during its latter days.

Yet liberalism was not limited to the British empire; indeed, it was spreading throughout the Atlantic world. Although the British reform act of 1832 attempted to avoid the means of France's 1830 revolution, it had similar ends. Liberalism would have advanced in Hanover and Britain, even had they not been joined in dynastic union. In conferring civil and political equality upon Hanoverian Catholics, George IV was simply bringing Hanoverian law into conformity with the constitution of the German confederation as established at the Congress of Vienna.