industrial revolution

The Industrial Revolution is the rapid period of economic and social change that began in Britain around 1760 and was fueled by technology and invention. The Industrial Revolution led to the rise of industry, factories, and manufacturing.

Prior to 1760, goods were produced mostly by individuals using tools. For example, a shoemaker would make shoes with their hands and simple tools. A weaver wove threads into cloth on a loom they manipulated with their hands. Most people worked on farms, however, and wealth was determined by the amount of land a person owned.

In the late 1700s, British inventions such as the steam engine, water jenny, and powered loom allowed goods to be produced more quickly by machine than by hand. These inventions led to the creation of factories where laborers operated machinery rather than making the goods themselves. Too, steam-powered boats and trains meant food and goods could be transported quicker.

The Industrial Revolution led people to move away from farms to cities, where they could work in factories and more food was available for purchase. Many people no longer had to grow their own food and make their own goods to survive. They could work a machine for pay and use the pay to buy the things they needed. The factory system allowed goods to be made so quickly that countries actually had surpluses and were able to trade with each other.

As a result, business owners were becoming extremely wealthy and political power shifted away from landowners to rich merchants and businesspeople. By the middle of the 1800s, Europe and the United States had notably shifted from agricultural nations to capitalist countries built on manufacturing and industry.

The first records of the term Industrial Revolution come from around 1840. The phrase combines the word industrial, which describes something as related to manufacturing, and the word revolution in the sense of “rapid or sudden change.” The Industrial Revolution was a period of many inventions and advances in manufacturing, which led to sudden, widespread change in economics and society as a whole.

The shift from farming to industry that occurred during the Industrial Revolution made a lot of people rich. It also led to advances in banking, transportation, long-distance communication, and other industries. Suddenly, science and technology were very important to both business and society.

The Industrial Revolution had long-lasting, negative effects as well. Economic classes became further and further apart from each other. Long hours and unsafe working conditions caused anger and unrest among the many laborers. This later caused economic thinkers like Karl Marx to oppose this new system of the wealthy elite oppressing the poor laborer. Marx and thinkers like him created and spread  the political idea of communism in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Modern historians argue that the Industrial Revolution was later followed by a second American Industrial Revolution that occurred in the late 1800s. This second revolution would lead to plastic and electricity replacing iron and steam. This revolution would continue into the late 1900s with the rise of computers.

More than 200 years later, the Industrial Revolution is remembered as a pivotal period of innovation that changed the world.

9yo: I know how we can get warp technology in 2020
9yo: I just have to invent a time machine
9yo: go back to the medieval period and give them the things they need to do to start the industrial revolution early
9yo: then when I come back to 2020 we’ll have starships!

— Anne Thériault (@anne_theriault) August 23, 2020

My sixth grader is writing a report on the industrial revolution.

Me: “Interestingly, sociology has its roots in trying to understand how the industrial revolution changed society.”

Sixth grader: <walks away>

— Kevin Shafer (@shafer_soc) April 22, 2020

• industry
• factory
• mass production
• technology
• capitalism
• Britain

True or False?

The Industrial Revolution led to people moving away from farms to work at factories and live in urban cities.