Consequences
England's crushing defeat by France, the dominant naval power, in naval engagements culminating in the 1690 Battle of Beachy Head, became the catalyst to Britain rebuilding itself as a global power. England had no choice but to build a powerful navy; as there were no funds available, in 1694 a private institution, the Bank of England, was set up to supply money to the King. £1.2m was raised in twelve days; half of this was used to rebuild the Navy.
As a side-effect, the huge industrial effort needed started to transform the economy, from iron works making nails to agriculture feeding the quadrupled strength of the Royal Navy. This helped the new United Kingdom – England and Scotland were united in 1707 – to become prosperous and powerful. Together with the power of the navy, this made Britain the dominant world power in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries while France remained the world dominant military power during this Napoleonic period, particularly on the continent.
Read more about this topic: Battle Of Beachy Head (1690)
Famous quotes containing the word consequences:
“If you are prepared to accept the consequences of your dreams ... then you must still regard America today with the same naive enthusiasm as the generations that discovered the New World.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“The consequences of our actions grab us by the scruff of our necks, quite indifferent to our claim that we have “gotten better” in the meantime.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“The medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium—that is, of any extension of ourselves—result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology.”
—Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)