alternatehistory.com

Update time before I head off to my last class of the day! I'll add footnotes later today. I'm also not sure if I'm making things in Britain too repressive to be plausible, but part of it is that the US history textbooks are somewhat demonizing Victorian British politics.

Culture #4: Victorian Britain

The 1890 Olympics:
With the success of the Athens and London games, the Olympics were becomimng not only a well known international sporting event but a desirable cultural event for the host city. In the 1888 meeting of the International Olympic Committee in London, several European cities sought the rights to host the 1890 Olympics. The members of the committee organized the first organizing and bidding process to decide which city would host the Olympics at this meeting. The three cities that submitted bids for the 1890 Olympics were Paris, Berlin, and Vienna. After the first round of voting, a majority of the committee selected Berlin to be the host of the 1890 Olympics.

The spectacular opening ceremony was presided over by Emperor Frederick III and Otto von Bismarck, and showed Berlin and Germany off as an industrial powerhouse. Much of the city had been electrified and a new electric tram system was unveiled. The 1890 games saw the first appearance for several nations surrounding Germany including Denmark, Austria, and Moravia. The Ottoman Empire also competed in its first Olympic Games in 1890, after the Sultanate permitted athletes to attend the games in 1889. The two Turkish athletes competed in the 1500 m dash and the discus throw, but did not get any medals.

Some of the highlights of the 1890 Olympics were in tennis and the marathon. In singles tennis, the gold medal match was between German native Frederick Stolberg and British Wimbledon champion William Renshaw. Renshaw beat Stolberg after a difficult match. However, in doubles, William and his twin brother Ernest Renshaw were knocked out by Americans Basil de Garmendia and Beals Wight. The 1890 Olympics also saw the debut of women's tennis as an Olympic event. Hedwiga Nedved, a German tennis player from Bohemia won the gold in the women's singles tournament, defeating Charlotte Anderson of Great Britain. In the marathon, Greek runner Evangelos Veloulis won the gold medal at age 17, beating out Hungarian Gyula Kellner and American Francis Duquesne, who had won the first running of the marathon in 1882.


Art of Great Britain:
During the 19th century, British art and literature developed somewhat in isolation to the rest of the continent. This is especially evident in the major works of British literature of the late 19th century. During this period, the British Isles underwent a revival of the Gothic novel as a reaction to the more lighthearted romantic literature of the early 19th century. These Victorian Gothic novels were darker than other contemporary works such as Tennyson's. The greatest author of this era has to be Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula and The Snake's Pass. Stoker is also notable for being one of the only Irish writers of the period who was successful in Britain.

Along with the writings of the great Gothic authors, Britain also had a large upswing of social literature. Many liberalist writers decried the treatment of the Highland Scottish and the Irish by the Conservative governments of Great Britain during the 1800s. However, they were often ostracized by the higher segments of society for a desire for mob rule should the working classes be allowed to vote. With such stagnation among the Parliament during the 19th century, many writers took to underground publications to encourage the middle and working classes to push for an expansion of the franchise and the granting of more rights to Catholics within Great Britain. The response by the Conservative governments was to seek out these papers and have them shut down for libel or unlicensed publishing after the passage of the Newspaper Licensing Act of 1867. The most famous case of this is the 1875 raid on the D & D Publishing Company in Oxford which killed three workers including Charles Dickens, one of the owners. The other owner, Charles Dodgson, went on to operate the Wonderland Press, another underground newspaper.