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Unit 7 Overview
Unit 7 Overview
People have worn clothes for millennia. But changes in fashion tell us a lot about the political, economic, and social revolutions that spread during the long nineteenth century.
As this video progresses, key ideas will be introduced to invoke discussion.
Think about the following questions as you watch the video
How did political revolutions influence fashion during the long nineteenth century?
In what ways did Enlightenment ideas inspire revolution?
Which revolution was considered most successful, and what were its limits?
How did the Industrial Revolution affect how clothing was made and worn?
How was fashion used to resist colonial rule and support suffrage movements?
: [Music]
: Battles, congresses, the execution of kings, the spread of factories and railroads.
: These changes forged by the Revolutions of the Long 19th century can be studied in many ways.
: But what about fashion? It's only natural if you're overturning the world order you
: want to look good doing it! Especially when the people you're overthrowing dressed like this.
: And so, on the eve of the American Revolution, colonial women protested
: British rule by urging their communities to abandon highly taxed English cloth
: for simple American homespun. Like this suit George Washington wore to his inauguration as president.
: Across the Atlantic Ocean, in Revolutionary France, you could get your head cut off for
: wearing restrictive corsets, heavy wigs, and elaborate clothing of the ruling class.
: In fact, the Revolutionary workers who overthrew the monarchy were known as "sans culottes" or, without
: culottes because they wore longer, more sensible trousers, rather than the short pants of the
: aristocrats and middle class. But people didn't want to dressed like workers forever. Within a
: few years, French women were celebrating the Revolution and their freedom by developing
: an entirely new style based on an exotic Indian cloth and simple but elegant hair styles.
: These revolutions and fashion reflect the changing ideas of this revolutionary era.
: The Long 19th Century lasted from 1750 to 1914 and this 164 year period transformed how
: human societies were governed, how they made the things they used, and how they
: connected with each other. Starting in 1750, people in many parts of the world
: sought to overthrow systems that they found oppressive. Their agitation found expression
: in debates about the nature of humanity and the universe known as the enlightenment.
: Among these ideas was a simple question did people need to be ruled by kings and aristocrats?
: Enlightenment thinkers argued that people ought to rule themselves to
: govern their country as citizens rather than serve a king as subjects. The belief that the
: people might be able to govern themselves helped develop a sense that those who were ruled by far
: away kings could instead rule themselves as an independent nation. These beliefs helped launch
: political and national revolutions all around the world. Revolutionaries wrote constitutions
: and raised armies to achieve their goals. They also designed and wore clothes like homespun
: local cloth, or the trousers of a worker that reflected their revolutionary spirit. Perhaps
: the most radical political revolution in this era happened when enslaved people of African descent
: overthrew French rule and slavery to create the free country of Haiti. But there were limits to
: these Revolutions. In other new democracies, like France and the United States, slavery continued.
: As did discrimination based on gender and class.
: Meanwhile, perhaps the biggest changes in fashion and in society were sparked by a very
: different sort of revolution. The Industrial Revolution! The Industrial Revolution made it
: possible to produce goods faster and cheaper. The first real industrial product in the world
: world, in fact, was cloth. After all, everyone needs clothing. Thanks to industrialization
: people could use machines powered by coal to make lots of cheap cloths. That meant that
: more people had access to more clothes than ever before. For many in the middle
: class, fashionable clothing became affordable for the first time. Clothing companies began
: to mass produce inexpensive shirts and dresses in large quantities. But there was a dark side
: to this explosion in productivity The people that produced the cotton, wool, and silk that
: made these clothes were often too poor to afford the clothing made from it, In fact,
: many were enslaved. Factory workers, often women and children, labored long hours in
: dangerous conditions to feed the demands of the middle class. And clothing factories were
: powered by coal, producing so much pollution that people in cities wore dark colors just to hide the grime.
: One of the reasons that mass-produced clothes were affordable in Europe and NorthAmerica
: was that they were made from the natural resources and labor in colonies. Colonized people
: were treated very differently from citizens of empires. This was the system of colonialism and
: at its heart was the exploitation of the labor and resources of colonial subjects in large parts
: of Asia, Africa, the Pacific, and the Caribbean. Colonized people everywhere resisted this system
: in many ways. Sometimes with violence and sometimes through more subtle methods. Some even used fashion
: as a weapon against colonialism. In India, like in the earlier American Revolution, anti-colonial
: leaders like Gandhi boycotted British clothing and wore only homespun cloth made in India.
: Throughout the Long 19th Century, people were trying to fix all these problems.
: Seeking to abolish slavery, reform colonialism, improve working conditions, end child labor, and create gender equality.
: In Reform movements, fashion also played a role. One great example is the suffragettes,
: women who fought against female oppression and to get women the vote. Suffragettes often
: wore white to emphasize the purity of their purpose. They also chose clothing that was easy
: to move in rather than the restrictive clothes that they were supposed to wear.
: And some of them took a page from the sans culottes and wore trousers instead of dresses.
: The ways we dress today remain symbolic the messages on our t-shirts, the colors
: we choose, even specific items of clothing are an expression
: of our goals and beliefs. But we owe a lot of our freedom to wear what we
: want to those who fought for freedom and justice in The Long 19th Century.