Modern Social Transformations

Modern Social Transformations

By Rachel Moore, and Trevor R. Getz, and Bennett Sherry

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Grocery stories were an important part of the Modern Revolution as people went from producing their own food to buying food with their wages.

In 2012, the American biologist Edward O. Wilson described what he saw as humanity’s big problem: “We have created a Star Wars civilization, with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology.”

In other words, the pace of our technological change has meant that our biology and our societies have struggled to keep up. Biologically, we’re still the same species that we were 250,000 years ago. And, despite the rise and fall of kings and queens, great revolutions and new nations, most of the world still operates within some variation of the hierarchical societies first pioneered by our city-dwelling ancestors millennia ago. Things have gotten very complex, very fast, and our rapidly accelerating technologies have often left human societies—and our bodies—struggling to keep up with the pace of change.

Almost everything that happens in your daily life is a result of the acceleration of complexity that has occurred in the last 200 years. If you lived more than two centuries ago, you would likely have grown your own food rather than shopped for it at a grocery store. You probably wouldn’t have gone to school. Hardly anyone got an education. You would have mainly used your feet to get from place to place—maybe a horse or sailing ship. Most people rarely left their local villages. The Modern Revolution—which is what we Big Historians call the last 200 years—changed all that.

Human societies have been growing more complex and more connected since the development of farming, 12,000 years ago. But in general, that change happened slowly, often taking centuries to develop. Around 1800, however, the world began to industrialize: People started to change from making things by hand to using machines in factories. Humanity unlocked massive new sources of energy in fossil fuels. With this new energy, we produced more stuff faster than ever and moved ourselves, our goods, and our ideas across the globe with trains, ships, telegraphs, and radio. As goods moved faster, big things started to change in the ways people were living their everyday lives.

Modern Revolution: The period—especially in the last 200 years—when human societies changed rapidly, in large part due to the discovery of new energy sources.
Nuclear family: a self-contained unit consisting of a father and mother and their children living together in one household
A “modern” family in Japan. As in other countries, as Japan industrialized, the large extended family became less important and nuclear families (two parents and their children) became more common.

New ways of living

The Modern Revolution totally transformed human societies across the Earth. Some of these changes were good, but some were harmful. During industrialization, some people moved from the countryside to the cities in hopes of finding work in factories. Others were driven off the farms their ancestors and extended family had worked for generations. As a result, the way societies thought about family changed. The rural extended family network—which provided lots of support and help—changed to the more-isolated urban nuclear family, which included two parents and their children.

This change in the family helped create a new environment in which people began to rethink the roles of men, women, and children. These changes were both good and bad. Many people became workers who were dependent on a job for a wage rather than working on their own land. Others found there were new kinds of jobs and opportunities available. People had access to more goods and more types of goods. Some also found new freedoms through their increased ability to travel. But this new lifestyle also took away some freedoms. Factory work was dictated by a shift schedule. And new schools kept time by a school bell.

New social classes emerged because of these changes. The urban working class and middle class grew rapidly in response to accelerating change. Suddenly, in the span of a few decades, many more people were living closer together in larger and larger cities, and their social structures were getting more and more complex.

Better or worse?

Did the Modern Revolution make life better or worse? The answer is different for people in different social classes, different genders, and different parts of the world. But we can say that for many people, industrialization created lots of challenges. Many people were working more hours than before, and often in factories and mines that were unsafe. And now they were working to make business owners richer. The invention of certain chemicals and modern machinery made factories very dangerous workplaces. To make enough money to survive, working-class families often had to send their children to work. Cities were dangerous places to live, especially for the poor, who were shoved together in shacks or tiny apartments where disease spread rapidly. Pollution made people very sick. Early mass-produced food was far from safe—it was often mixed with toxic substances or stored in poorly made cans. And of course, modern weapons like machine guns were much deadlier than the weaponry that came before.

New York City officials investigate a cluttered tenement where many immigrant workers lived (c. 1900).
Colony: a territory governed by a distant country, often occupied by numbers of citizens of that country
Reformer: a person who works to bring about reform or improvement
Labor union: An organized group of workers who join to protect their rights and improve working conditions.

At the same time though, industrialization produced innovations that had the potential to make things better. New medicines were invented, and they could be mass produced and given to more people, more effectively. Food safety measures, such as more-careful canning and refrigeration, made food cheaper and sometimes healthier. Advancements in transportation (faster trains and ships) and communication (the telegraph) made it easier to travel and talk.

But not everyone benefited from these innovations. The Modern Revolution increased industrializing nations’ need for more resources, which increased their need and desire to conquer other lands and peoples. Nation-states that industrialized early—like many European states as well as Japan and the United States—used their modern weapons and know-how to occupy large parts of Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean. The people living in these colonies were often treated as badly, or worse, than the working classes back at home. They were often forced to work in conditions similar to slavery.

Social movements

Quite early in the Modern Revolution, things were changing so quickly that conditions got really bad for a lot of people. Some people noticed that their societies weren’t organized to deal with the challenges of the modern world, and they tried to make things better. We call these people reformers, because they wanted to change the shape (or re-form) how society worked. And quite often, they found people to work with them. The same technologies that connected and moved people around the world made it possible for reformers to unify and cooperate.

Perhaps the most famous abolitionist of all, Olaudah Equiano (Gustavus Vassa) was a British writer who was enslaved in Africa, fought for his own freedom, and then told his story as part of the fight against slavery.
Abolitionism: A movement in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries aimed at abolishing (ending) slavery and the slave trade.
Suffrage: the right to vote in a political election
Women in London protesting for the right to vote.
Boys in Philadelphia protesting that they want to go to school rather than work.

Some of the first reform movements focused on labor. For example, workers united to improve the poor working conditions that arose during the Modern Revolution. We call these organizations of workers labor unions. Striking was one of the ways they called for reforms. A strike is a public display of protest where workers refuse to work in order to force their bosses to give them better working conditions. Because the strikes were public and very disruptive, they helped inform the public about the horrible working conditions in factories. Later, in the twentieth century, strikes ensured a minimum wage and an eight-hour workday for workers. Do you like weekends? Well, labor strikes and unions helped make sure that workers weren’t forced to work on the weekends.

Another important early social reform movement was abolitionism. These reformers—called abolitionists—wanted to end slavery. This movement was made up of different groups, many of which were inspired by enslaved people who rose up to demand their freedom in Haiti. Abolitionists publicized stories about the horrors of slavery. One abolitionist—Africa-born Olaudah Equiano—wrote a book about his kidnapping in Africa and enslavement in the Americas. These stories won over members of religious groups and politicians in countries with large slave-owning populations. But the movement really got going when they won support from working-class people such as the housewives of Britain, who, in the early nineteenth century, refused to purchase sugar grown on plantations worked by enslaved people.

Another reform movement was the women’s suffrage movement, which was responsible for getting women the right to vote. Women were working outside of the home for the first time, and they experienced the inequalities and injustices of industrial factories. This gave them a new perspective, and their work gave them economic independence—money of their own. This empowered women from all over the globe to fight for their rights. In 1893, New Zealand became the first nation to grant women the right to vote. Other countries, including the United States, granted voting rights to women in the early twentieth century. Many women in this movement were also leading figures in the abolitionist and labor reform movements.

We should also talk about the movement to end child labor. Children were a vital part of the Modern Revolution’s workforce. Their small size allowed them to do specialized tasks, such as working in tight places like narrow mine shafts. Instead of going to school, many kids worked long hours in factories. Many families also relied on their children’s wages to survive. Early on, there were no laws to protect kids. But as the nineteenth century rolled on, more people became aware that children were suffering in the workforce. Labor unions and social reformers campaigned for more laws and regulations to protect children. These eventually turned into laws that limited child labor and required children to go to school.

Conclusion

Your life today was shaped by the changes to society that happened during the Modern Revolution. It was also shaped by the reformers who opposed or tried to influence those changes in ways that made life somewhat better. These struggles for reform continue today.

As our technologies advance, human societies still struggle to keep up with an ever more complex world. How will modern technologies and challenges like climate change, the internet, AI, and space travel inspire us to reform our societies in the future?

About the authors

Rachel Moore is a professor of history at De Anza College. She holds two graduate degrees in the Humanities and history. Her areas of specialty are world and Latin American history.

Trevor Getz is Professor of African History at San Francisco State University. He has written eleven books on African and world history, including Abina and the Important Men. He is also the author of A Primer for Teaching African History, which explores questions about how we should teach the history of Africa in high school and university classes.

Bennett Sherry is one of the historians working on OER Project. He received his PhD in world history from the University of Pittsburgh and has taught courses in world history, human rights, and the modern Middle East. Bennett is a recipient of the Pioneer in World History award from the World History Association, and is coauthor of The Long Nineteenth Century, 1750–1914: Crucible of Modernity (2nd ed).

Image credits

Creative Commons This work is licensed under CC BY 4.0 except for the following:

Grocery stories were an important part of the Modern Revolution as people went from producing their own food to buying food with their wages. Public domain. https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17023625

A “modern” family in Japan. As in other countries, as Japan industrialized, the large extended family became less important and nuclear families (two parents and their children) became more common. © Photo 12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

New York City officials investigate a cluttered tenement where many immigrant workers lived (c. 1900). Public domain. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Two_officials_of_the_New_York_City_Tenement_House_Department_inspect_a_cluttered_basement_living_room,_ca._1900_-_NARA_-_535469.jpg

Perhaps the most famous abolitionist of all, Olaudah Equiano (Gustavus Vassa) was a British writer who was enslaved in Africa, fought for his own freedom, and then told his story as part of the fight against slavery. © Photo 12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Women in London protesting for the right to vote. © PHOTOS.com/Getty Images Plus

Boys in Philadelphia protesting that they want to go to school rather than work. © Bettmann/Getty Images