ABSTRACT
The years 1901–14, sometimes dubbed the Edwardian Era, form an epilogue to the Victorian Age, but at the same time were the period of development of forces revealed or intensified by the War of 1914–18 and subsequently active. They were years of the growth of commercial rivalries, especially between Great Britain and Germany—a psychological and perhaps economic factor contributing to armed conflict. They witnessed the revival of the Protectionist agitation which triumphed in the ’thirties. They experienced the introduction of a policy of social reformism, pioneered by Lloyd George’s insurance schemes and redistributive taxation, which has now culminated in the welfare state. They were years when the rise in the general level of prices, which has continued almost unabated, became again manifest. One result was the accentuation of industrial strife, associated with the rise of the Labour Party, at the expense of Liberalism, which gained so striking but ephemeral a triumph in 1906.
