Ministry of higher education, science and innovation republic of uzbekistan

The Modern Age

World War I

King George V followed his father Edward VII to the throne in 1910 and reigned until 1936. Only four years after he became king, George V led his country through World War I, fighting against his first cousin Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, both men descendants of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Czar Nicholas II of Russia, overthrown and executed with his wife and family in 1917, was also King George’s cousin by marriage, his wife Alexandra another descendent of Victoria and Albert, whose children had married into most of the royal families in Europe.



George V by Sir Luke Fildes.
Essentially an entire generation of British men—and many women—were killed in World War I. Others returned maimed, physically and mentally. War poets such as Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owens vividly depicted the horror of war, the reality of war as compared to the slogans and imagined glory of fighting for one’s country. The economic cost of the war also devastated Britain. The conspicuous wealth of the Edwardian Era disappeared into a financial depression.
Irish nationalism brought added tension to Britain. The desire for home rule in Ireland, then part of the British Empire, culminating in the Easter Uprising of 1916, caused strife and instability on another front for Britain. Fears that Ireland would collaborate with Germany in World War I led to British concessions and, after the war, the granting of Irish independence in 1922. William Butler Yeats commemorated and contributed to Irish patriotism in his writing.



Arrest of a Suffragette, 1914.
The active role of women in the war effort helped achieve universal suffrage in 1928.

By the end of World War I, Britain was a much different place from the exuberant, confident empire that Victoria knew¹.

World War II

The oldest son of George V, Edward, in his role of Prince of Wales and heir apparent was not allowed to participate in combat during World War I, but his efforts to visit and encourage areas suffering from depressed economic times in the 1930s made him a popular figure among the British. After the death of his father, Edward became King Edward VIII; however, within a year he made the government aware that he wished to marry the twice-divorced American woman Wallace Simpson. Because of the monarch’s role as head of the Church of England, political leaders and advisors in Britain opposed the marriage. Edward VIII chose to abdicate the throne in order to marry Simpson. Upon his abdication, his younger brother became King George VI. With his wife and queen, the Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, George VI symbolized the courage, fortitude, and the “stiff upper lip” with which the country endured the hardships of World War II. The couple and their children, the current Queen Elizabeth II and her younger sister the late Princess Margaret, spent the war years at Buckingham Palace and in Windsor rather than evacuate to safer areas. The royal family’s determination to share in the hardships and dangers of the war earned the admiration of the British public².