Just another manic Monday

Someone wakes up in the morning. She makes breakfast from food she bought at a grocery store and keeps in boxes in her house. She gets on the train to work. She works all day in a factory, making things other people will buy. When her shift is over, she takes the train home.

Just modern daily life for many, right? It happens today in Los Angeles, in Kuala Lumpur, in Paris, and in Abidjan. This routine was familiar to many in the mid nineteenth century as well, during the era of the Industrial Revolution. But there was a time before this way of life existed. Prior to 1750, there weren’t really any grocery stores. Food wasn’t preserved in boxes and cans.

A “train” was usually a long line of camels. Hardly anyone worked for a wage in a factory or an office.

All of these changes were part of the Industrial Revolution. In this unit, we explore how such an enormous transformation to our way of life came about. We also investigate how people experienced it and what impact it had. Was that impact the same for everyone? Did everyone become a wage worker, taking the train to the factory and buying their food from stores? Did women and men have the same experience? What was industrialization like in different parts of the world? In rural and in urban areas? For people in different social classes and with different amounts of wealth? These are questions that touch all three of our frames, but focus in particular on issues of production and distribution.

Origins of the Industrial Revolution

The first part of the unit is the Industrial Revolution’s origin story. We often think of this transformation as being driven by Europe. And, it is true, a lot of early industrialization did happen there, especially in Britain, France, Belgium, and their neighbors. Still, to really understand where, how, and why the Industrial Revolution began, we have to think on local and global scales at the same time.

Locally, we must start in Britain. When its capital city, London, hosted the 2012 Olympics, the theatrical opening ceremonies featured smokestacks suddenly looming darkly over what had been a peaceful green hillside moments before. Whether the ominous scene conveyed pride or perhaps a note of guilt, the message was clear: Industrialism started here.

Why did industrialism start in Britain in the 1700s? Well, it may have had something to do with Britain’s environment. Most of the British people lived on one relatively flat island, with easy transportation between cities and the countryside. The land provided many important industrial resources, namely coal. It also had a lot of people who needed jobs, which meant many potential factory workers. British scientists were among the first to embrace the rapid technological innovation needed for industrialization. They developed the first useful steam engine, called the Watt steam engine. What’s more, they linked other inventions to the powerful steam engine, such as the spinning mule and the power loom.

The earliest railroads were also built in Britain. British cities grew fastest in the eighteenth century as rural residents moved there looking for work. Many also moved because they were forced. British laws were so pro-industry that land could legally be taken from those who worked on it, turning British farmers into hourly wage factory-workers, whether they liked it or not.

From this local point of view, you can see some of the re Britain as a community mattered a great deal, but so did the larger issues surrounding the changing methods of production and distribution.

So let’s switch scales and think globally, with particular attention to expanding and changing global networks. For example, many of the early British innovations came after similar, if less successful, experiments elsewhere. Before the success of the Watt steam engine, Italian, Chinese, and Islamic scientists had all built small steam engines of their own. In the same way, workplaces that sort of looked like factories had existed elsewhere—in slave plantations of the British Caribbean, for example, and in flour mills in the northeast United States. British scientists and innovators learned about these experiments in other regions and used them in their own work.

The world industrializes, but to mixed reviews

Britain’s empire—itself a vast network—similarly contributed to its industrialization. Laws, beliefs, and financial systems connected people in all parts of the empire, and these connections increased trade between Britain and its colonies. Farmers in Britain could become factory workers because they could eat food produced elsewhere in the empire, instead of needing to produce their own. Fish from the Canadian coast, or foods introduced to Britain from elsewhere, like potatoes, fed the increasing number of workers. No wonder fish and chips became a staple British food! British factories also depended on raw materials from their colonies thousands of miles away. In particular, wool from Australia and New Zealand, and cotton from India jump-started the British textile industry.

Industrialization in Britain (and its empire) was only the beginning. As we see in the second lesson in this unit, the Industrial Revolution soon led to a global industry. The United States, other parts of Europe, Egypt, and Japan all industrialized in the mid-to-late nineteenth century. But industrialization was uneven. Some regions industrialized successfully, if under different models, as was the case in Japan. But in other places, like Egypt and India, European imperialist policies purposely reversed or prevented full industrialization. This protected British producers and networks from Indian or Egyptian competition.

Economic transformations

What made this industrial world go round? Money.

This era saw the full development of capitalism as an economic system. Individuals or groups of people could now own vast amounts of assets. They could invest their money in companies to make profits. This system tended to concentrate wealth in the hands of business owners and investors. It also changed the type of work most people did. Increasingly, people worked for wages that were paid every week or month.

Capitalism may have helped to increase overall productivity in the world, but it also made working conditions harder for many people. Workers—including children—labored on farms and plantations or in factories to increase profits. In response, many pushed for reforms. They called for an end to child labor, to bad working conditions, and to slavery. Reform movements also called for women’s rights. Some reformers even proposed an alternate economic system called socialism, which promised to place more power in the hands of workers and distribute wealth more equally. The development of socialism gave birth to arguments about what the best economic system looks like— arguments that continue even today!

Social transformations

The impact of industrialization varied within communities, as well. Even in Britain, for some people, industry was a miracle of productivity and rising wealth. For others, it brought suffering and poverty. It was often more liberating for men than for women, who found themselves confined either to the home or to underpaid jobs in the grim interior of a factory.

Moreover, industrialization changed even the smallest type of community—the family. It changed the way we think about everything from what it means to be a kid, to what roles men and women should play in society and the family, to how we should act around each other.

What created these differences? How long did they last? How do they endure today? These are all questions that are worth asking as we study the Industrial Revolution.