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Expansion and empire

In the 19th century there was much less religious unrest around the world, and the problems between Catholics and Protestants did not cause major disruptions as they had in earlier centuries.

There was much more racist ideology within the British Empire, and it affected the way in which the peoples of Africa and Asia were treated by the colonial officials. However, the slave trade itself was abolished in 1807 and the slaves themselves were freed in 1834.

Ideas didn’t play a major part in migration to and from Britain at this time, but the sense of superiority white British people had, gave them confidence to confront native powers and use superior technology against them.

There were still issues of religious hatred and at times there was religious persecution.

• The majority of Irish people remained Catholic, and the unsympathetic response of the British government to the Great Famine of the 1840s was believed to be influenced by anti-Catholic feeling.
• Stronger religious hatred was shown towards the Jews across Europe, especially in Eastern Europe. There had long been hostility between Christians and Jews across Europe, and there were periods where this hostility grew into violent persecution, as in the Russian Empire in the late 19th century. This led to major Jewish migrations across Europe and the Atlantic.

Eastern European Jews in the 19th century

In the 1880s there were major attacks on Jewish people in the western areas of the Russian Empire, allegedly because of Jewish involvement in the assassination of the Tsar of Russia in 1881 and later political attacks. These anti-Jewish pogroms led to 40 Jews being killed in 1881. An even bloodier wave of pogroms broke out from 1903 to 1906, leaving an estimated 2000 Jews dead and many more wounded.

The response to these events was the migration of hundreds of thousands of Jews across Europe, most of them planning to head for the United States. About 120,000 decided to stay permanently in major cities in Britain, particularly London, Manchester and Leeds. In London, Jews lived primarily in the Spitalfields and Whitechapel areas, close to the docks, and the east end of London became the centre of the Jewish community in Britain.