| Background reading: Roberts, Europe, Part 4, chapters 2 & 3 |
"The World's New Rich," and "A New Sort of Civilization."
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Economic Dimensions: Quantitative and
qualitative change
- exponential growth in production through the factory system of production powered by steam
driven machinery
- change in the nature and location of manufacturing work
- in
textiles, the shift from production centered in the home with task orientation
toward working time to production in factories governed by time orientation,
i.e., the clock and strictly observed schedules, 5 a.m. to 7 p.m. with two 30
minute breaks, for example.
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Political Dimensions: the influence of the Enlightenment
and the French Revolution on British developments
- pressure for enfranchisement--middle classes, working classes, men and women;
pressure for reform of working conditions, the environment, and health.
- Reform of working conditions in factories. The
Factory Act of 1833 was an early example of the call for the regulation of abuses
in the factory system.
- emergence of socialism in response to industrial capitalism
- utopian socialism of Robert Owen
- revolutionary socialism of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels
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International Developments
- British colonies: sources for raw materials for manufacturing in Britain (raw cotton), food (wheat, rice), and markets for goods produced in Britain (cotton goods, hardware, iron and steel products)
- colonies as source of profitable investment
- British built railways in India fostered trade and economic growth as well as facilitating British political and economic power in the sub-continent.
- France and Germany followed this pattern, too, and, for example, built railways in their African colonies beginning in the 1880s.
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Environmental Dimensions:
- how much ecological and environmental degradation occurred in industrializing Britain?
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| Social and Cultural Change
- changing ideas of success, status, and achievement: the aristocratic ideal of the 18th century vs. the entrepreneurial ideal of
the industrial era
- concerns about impoverishment, child labor, women's
work, wages (historian's debate on the standard of living for workers, 1780 to 1850) Standard of Living Debate
- Art & Industry (What connection might there be with Condition
of England Debate?)
- the rise of mass leisure as evidenced in working-class music halls
and working-class resorts in the 1890s.
The Aristocratic Ideal of the 18th century:
Portrait
of Mr. and Mrs. Andrews, 1745-46, by Thomas Gainsborough
The Entrepreneurial Ideal of the Early Industrial Age (ca. 1780s-1860s century):
The Representation of Industrialization in Art
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