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:
“[As teenager], the trauma of near-misses and almost- consequences usually brings us to our senses. We finally come down someplace between our parents’ safety advice, which underestimates our ability, and our own unreasonable disregard for safety, which is our childlike wish for invulnerability. Our definition of acceptable risk becomes a product of our own experience.”
—Roger Gould (20th century)
“Without being forgiven, released from the consequences of what we have done, our capacity to act would ... be confined to one single deed from which we could never recover; we would remain the victims of its consequences forever, not unlike the sorcerer’s apprentice who lacked the magic formula to break the spell.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
“There are more consequences to a shipwreck than the underwriters notice.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)