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Unit 6
10–15% of examThis unit explains why industry started in Britain, how it spread across Europe, and how a second wave of steel, chemicals and electricity changed daily life again. It also covers how people reacted to these changes: conservatives trying to hold the old order together, revolutions in 1830 and 1848, new ideologies like liberalism and socialism, and governments slowly taking on public health, schooling and working conditions.
Longer videos that cover the whole unit. Good for a first pass or a final review.
Industrialization began in Britain in the late 1700s. Britain had plenty of coal and iron, rivers and canals, money from trade, a growing population freed from farm work by the Agricultural Revolution, and inventions like new spinning machines and James Watt's improved steam engine, which moved work from homes into factories.
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After 1815, industry spread from Britain to Belgium, France and the German states, often with more government help than in Britain. Railroads tied markets together, the German Zollverein customs union (1834) cut trade barriers, and Friedrich List argued for tariffs to protect new industries. Southern and eastern Europe lagged behind because of poor transport, little capital and, in Russia, serfdom.
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From about 1870, a Second Industrial Revolution built on steel (made cheaply by the Bessemer process), chemicals, electricity and the internal combustion engine. Germany caught up with and in some industries passed Britain, big companies and cartels grew, and mass-produced goods and department stores created a new consumer culture.
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People poured into fast-growing cities where housing was crowded and diseases like cholera spread through dirty water. Society split more clearly into a property-owning middle class (bourgeoisie) and a wage-earning working class (proletariat), and middle-class families idealized "separate spheres," with men at work and women at home. Long factory hours and child labor led to laws like Britain's Factory Act of 1833, and by 1900 higher wages and better diets were improving workers' lives.
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After 1815, the great powers worked together in the Concert of Europe to keep the peace and stop revolutions. Conservatives, inspired by thinkers like Edmund Burke and Joseph de Maistre, defended monarchy, the church and tradition. Metternich's Carlsbad Decrees (1819) censored the press and watched universities in the German states.
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Liberals and nationalists challenged the conservative order again and again. Greece won independence from the Ottoman Empire, Russian officers' Decembrist Revolt (1825) failed, and the July Revolution of 1830 replaced France's king. In 1848, after hard economic years, revolutions broke out in France, the German states, the Austrian Empire and Italy; most were crushed within a year, but France became a republic again and serfdom in Austria ended. In Russia, Alexander II freed the serfs in 1861, but reform from above also fed revolutionary groups and, in the end, the Revolution of 1905.
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Industrial life pushed people to propose new systems. Liberals like Jeremy Bentham, whose utilitarianism judged laws by whether they did the most good for the most people, and John Stuart Mill wanted individual rights and limited government, while radicals demanded the vote for all men. Utopian socialists like Robert Owen built cooperative communities, Marx and Engels' Communist Manifesto (1848) predicted the working class would overthrow capitalism, and anarchists like Mikhail Bakunin rejected the state entirely.
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Workers formed labor unions and mass political parties, such as Germany's Social Democratic Party and Britain's Labour Party, to push for better pay, conditions and the vote. Britain's Chartists demanded voting rights for working men, women's rights campaigners such as Flora Tristan and the Pankhursts fought for legal and political rights, and religious and charitable groups campaigned against slavery and poverty.
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Governments moved away from leaving everything to the market and began to step in. Britain's Great Reform Act (1832) gave more middle-class men the vote, Edwin Chadwick's reports led to new sewers and clean water, Baron Haussmann rebuilt Paris with wide boulevards and sewers, and states expanded public schooling and factory inspection.
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This wrap-up topic asks you to trace chains of cause and effect: how coal, capital and machines led to factories, how factories created new classes and crowded cities, and how those problems led to new ideologies, labor movements and government reform.
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