Mastery of the Machine: The Industrial Revolution, 1764 to 1914
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Theme
The Industrial Revolution transformed the West into a wealthy, powerful, urbanized society, although many of the lower classes lagged behind in benefiting therefrom; so political conflict often focused on how to manage change.
Summaries
Facts of Factories
The Industrial Revolution built wealth in new ways.
Life in the Big City
Rapid urbanization made civilized life difficult.
Cleaning Up the Mess
After the fall of Napoleon, the conservative leaders of Europe tried to rebuild states and regimes.
For the Workers
Various kinds of socialism responded to needs caused by the Industrial Revolution.
The Machinery of Nature
The Scientific Revolution expanded to geology, biology, medicine, and the social sciences.
Keywords
Facts of Factories
nineteenth century (1815-1914), Industrial Revolution (1764-1914), Scientific Agricultural Revolution, insurance, canals, spinning jenny (1764), factory or mill system, steam engine, railroads, Luddites, Ricardo’s "iron law of wages"
Life in the Big City
urbanization, police, sanitation, indoor plumbing, working class or proletariat, so-called family values, consumer economy, advertising, skycrapers, oil, petrochemicals, internal combustion engine, automobile, airplane
Cleaning Up the Mess
Romantic Movement, Congress of Vienna (1814-1815), Metternich (d.1859), conservatism, Holy Alliance, Quadruple Alliance, collective security, liberalism, political parties, Reform Bill of 1832, Revolutions of 1830, Belgium, Revolutions of 1848, Third Republic (1871-1945), Paris Commune, Nietzsche (d.1900), guerilla warfare, terrorism, anarchism
For the Workers
socialism, assembly-line production, utopian socialism, Robert Owen (d. 1858), “scientific” socialism or Marxism or communism, Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto (1848), dialectical materialism, social democracy/democratic socialism, Christian socialism, labor unions/trade unionism, state socialism, corporations, cartels/trusts, populism
The Machinery of Nature
theory of catastrophism, theory of uniformitarianism, evolution, Darwin (d. 1882), The Origin of Species (1859), theory of natural selection, Social Darwinism, social sciences, higher criticism, fundamentalism, modernism, Freud (d. 1939), Pasteur (d. 1895), germ theory of disease, atomic theory
Review Questions
- How did inventions and capitalism produce the Industrial Revolution?
- How did urbanization develop a modern society?
- How did competing political ideologies offer alternatives in the nineteenth century?
- How did socialists address problems manufactured by the Industrial Revolution?
- How did modern science generate new and unsettling knowledge?
Other Questions
- How does the basic principle in Chapter 13, “no revolution can succeed against a relatively competent government,” prove itself against attempts at revolution in the Nineteenth Century?
- How does modern politics force change on civilization?
- How do the various kinds of socialism compare and contrast?
- What is the distinction in defining evolution as a fact but natural selection as a theory?
- How do recent politicians and pundits declare the new middle class values of the Nineteenth Century as if they should be normative for our society today?
- How did the rise of modern science change Western Society's view of the world? You might consider the following questions: How did astronomy first destroy the medieval view of the universe, and what replaced it in the 17th century? What 19th century advances, especially in physics and biology, in turn brought further change, and how do these affect our view of ourselves and the world?
- Discuss the changes brought by increasing capitalism and industrialization at the end of 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. What were the theories and realities of economic practice among businesses and workers? How did new technologies transform the lives of people around the world? How did urbanization and working conditions change social structures?
