Chapter 17 Revolutions of Industrialization 1750-1914

The idea of industrialization since its beginning in Great Britain in late eighteenth century has been embraced by many types of societies because it generated lots of wealth and the power it conveyed. The industrial revolution would influence economy, social structures, and environment. The Industrial Revolution began independently in only one place, Western Europe, and to be exact in Great Britain. The previous breakthrough was the Agricultural Revolution that had occurred around 12,000 years before the industrial revolution and also altered the human way of life. Currently we don't know if the history of industrialization has ended and is still an unfinished story. We don't know if we are at  the beginning of a movement that leads to worldwide industrialization, in the middle of a world where there is division between the rich and poor countries, or approaching an end of an environmentally unsustainable industrial era. The Industrial Revolution was such a large movement that it could not be confined to Britain. It began to spread to continental Western Europe, then by the end of the nineteenth century it spread to countries like United States, Russia, and Japan. Now there was a globalization of industrialization that had begun. Wherever the industrialization was spreading to there was a range of similar outcomes for the countries. With the industrialization came new technologies and sources of energy that would increase production and unprecedented urbanization. There was a dramatic change in class structures for the middle classes and a factory working class grew in numbers as well as prominence while aristocrats, artisans, and peasants declined as classes. Women were not treated equally as men for they were given lower wages than males, had difficulty joining unions that formed, and were accused of taking jobs form men. Trade unions and socialist movements were formed due to working-calss frustration and anger, which became a new social conflict in industrial societies. The Industrial Revolution did not occur in the same manner and unfolded differently in diverse countries where it became based. Pace and timing of industrialization, the size and shape of major industries, the role of the state, the political expression of social conflict, and many other factors that made the process rich in possibilities were all differences of the industrialization in different countries. Some differences we saw was that in France industrialization was lower than in Britain. Then in Germany iron, steel, and coal was where the focus was on for heavy industry while in Britain the textile industry was most important. However the variations of the industrializing process was not more noticeable then in two countries that lay on the periphery of Europe which were the United States and Russia. The United States was a nation that was young, vigorous, democratic, expanding country, populated by people of European decent, along with a large number of slaves of African origin. As for Russia its Eastern Orthodox Christianity, an autocratic tsar, a huge population of serfs, and had an empire that stretched across all of the northern Asia. A French observer Alexis de Tocqueville commented on these two emerging giants in his book Democracy in America, "...Their starting-pint is different and their courses are not the same; yet each of them seems marked out by the will of Heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe." Tocqueville was not wrong because the industrial revolution would turn both the United States and Russia into major global powers.