I'm taking in the book ‘Blood in the Machine’ by Brian Merchant. It's about the first wise and sensible but ultimately doomed struggle against enslavement by the means of tech. The King who was George IV but we still tend to think of him as The Prince Regent,had one child (because he did not like his legal wife AT ALL) a daughter Princess Charlotte,the darling of the English public,the Peoples Princess. She identified herself with the struggling workers by allying herself publicly with those public figures who were identified with the anti-technology movement thus deeply annoying her Father but that line of our Monarchs had a family history of that. She was only 11 but a headstrong,passionate and highly intelligent girl,she was beautiful too which always helps in popular acclaim. So a great What if is how would our 19th century have been if she had lived. Charlotte was born 7 January 1796 but died 6 November 1817, a few hours after giving birth to.a stillborn son. Her husband of just over a year was the young Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha,and the young couple were in love and with their happiness,her known robust health,and the heir to be,all seemed set fair for England so her death was met by huge mourning and sadness from the people and the prospect of political instability and of course it led to the slightly undignified and risible (even people at the time saw the funny side) breeding race that brought us Queen Victoria. If Charlotte had lived our nineteenth century wouldn't have been The Victorian Age. Undoubtedly all the technical and engineering advances would have happened but would the society they developed in have used them differently,would the safety and laws regulating working hours and child safety that did come in ( under much criticism about opposition) have come in. I ask this because Charlotte was very much a Georgian person,she belonged in that rollicking,rip roaring age of rakes and gambling and grand balls and if it feels good do it. She was no Victoria married to her sensible Albert. Victoria regarded her forebears (by the time she was born they were all OLD PEOPLE),with distaste and even horror. To her they were dreadful people with no morals.As Albert (related on another branch of the family) felt the same they remodelled the British Monarchy on more Family Friendly lines and by extension British life too. People didn't stop being naughty but they stopped doing it in the street and frightening the horses.One last disturbing fact that suggests Queen Charlotte's reign might not have been so idyllic after all is that her husband Leopold later in life became the King of Belgium and it was under his direction that the Belgian Congo developed and we know that is a byword for horror. What's more all the horrific things that happened there (of which I know few details and don't want to learn more) didn't happen at arms length from him without his knowledge,he was fully involved as The Belgian Congo was actually a private company or Corporation of which he was the Head. It wasnt,or not just European imperialism,it was business. So the fairytale lovely young Princess and her Prince might ultimately not have taken our England,let alone Scotland,Wales and Ireland down such a golden path as all that.
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Excellent book review and historical summary! My wife is quite interested in reading this one. Yes what WOULD have happened?