Queen Victoria and the Height of the British Empire

Queen Victoria reigned from 1837 to 1901 — the longest reign in British history until Elizabeth II surpassed it. The Victorian era saw Britain become the world's foremost industrial, military, and colonial power. At its peak, the British Empire governed roughly 25% of the world's land surface and 400 million people — an empire on which "the sun never set." The era witnessed the Industrial Revolution reach full force, the building of railways across the globe, the expansion of the telegraph, and advances in science from Darwin's theory of evolution to Pasteur's germ theory. Victoria married Prince Albert and had nine children, whose marriages connected the British royal family to nearly every throne in Europe (she was called "the grandmother of Europe"). But the Victorian era also produced the horrors of colonialism: famines in India, the Opium Wars in China, the Scramble for Africa, and the exploitation of peoples across the globe. Victoria's reign defined an age — and its legacy, for good and ill, shaped the modern world.