LESSON 6: INDUSTRIALIZATION

Overview
1. The process of industrialisation (1750-1914)

2. Three big waves

 1780s-1820s: British leader (and Belgium)
 1840s-1870s: Acceleration and spread: follower economies
 1890s-1900s: Laggard* economies: Russia and Italy

3. Impact of industrialisation

1. The process of industrialization (1750-1914)

Industrialisation = transformation of a society that was predominantly agrarian, rural
societies into industrial and urban societies. It is not only an economic and industrial
change, but also had an impact on the shift on demographics, the change on the sense
of community… a broad impact.

Impact on technology: Introduction of technology affects the organisation of labour

 Technology:
- The adaptation of new technology to the manufacturing process
(steam/electricity replaces human/animal labour): people and animals
suddenly became redundant, so new jobs and organisations were needed.
- The invention of special purpose machinery (steam engines, spinning
machines, etc.) to use power more effectively for production (special
purpose machinery): machinery to become more effective in producing
better.
- Steam engines: key element that led to the development of railway
systems
 Organisation of labour:
- Shift from primary sector (agriculture) to secondary sector
(manufacturing)
- Shift from small manufacturing workshops to factories and mass
production
- Replacement of small shops by department stores
- Rise of big business (investment banks) and capitalism (private instead of
state investments)
 Rise of big business: not only institutions, think about important
European families such as Rothschild or Rockefellers. They become
dominant in the process of pre-Church reformation, they lend
money to others. During the late 18 th and early 19th centuries,
these families turned their wealth into big businesses and empires.
Example of department store: galleries royales Saint-Hubert in Brussels. Leisure
became an activity to be consumed in Western Europe.

Industrialisation
Supported by an agricultural revolution which went hand in hand with the scientific
agriculture of the 18th century
1. Introduction of new crops (potato, peas, beans), which changed the diet of
Europeans, creating a healthier table impacting the longevity of the citizens.
2. Technical improvements: improved drainage systems, methods of soil
enrichment and crop rotation, enclosure of agricultural land => plant more,
differently depending on seasons (already existing in other civilizations and
societies).
3. Scientific methods for breeding: raising more animals meant using more
animals for work and feeding.
4. Mechanisation:
- Scattering seeds by hand vs. drill device that allowed planting in neat rows
(up). Big families were needed.
- Farm machinery: the reaper and seed drill (down), labour become a
surplus to be used somewhere. More Europeans moved towards the city
and the families become smaller.
 Enhanced productivity created a surplus labour force (available for factory work
in urban centres).
2. Three big waves
Shares of National Output by Sector around 1850 and 1910

Common things: towards the end of the 19th century industry is on the rise. Britain
stands out with the highest national output in industry, as well as in transport and
commerce. These numbers do not provide the total picture of the economy: do not
take into account government expenditure, military…

In comparison to 1850, we see that for the other countries the increase of national
share of national output in industry increases significantly. They were trying to develop
at the same pace as Britain.
In terms of agriculture in Britain it drops from 21 in 1850 to only 6 in 1910. It also
drops for the other countries. Even though throughout the 18 th and 19th century France
remained predominantly a town-organised economy, even if the process of
industrialization was taking place.

If we look at Germany’s trajectory, by 1910 it becomes the country with the leadership
in terms of shares of national output in the industrial sector.

How does Europe look like?

How did Europe look like during the industrialization period? We need to understand
that.
 British exceptionalism: contrary to the rest that are giving and taking with one
another, it’s with its back to the continent. It had its own preoccupations.
Britain is detached from the continent while the other countries were engaging
in wars. Not just the geographical position, other historical and political
elements which are worth noting*.
 Napoleonic France
 Belgium eaten up sometimes by the French or the Dutch
 The Ottoman Empire was on a slow decline
 Etc. but with conflicts.
Cecil Rhodes: a British entrepreneur who had enterprises primarily in Africa.
 Rhodesia: Zimbabwe

Russia and Italy:

 Shares of national output in industry have an increase
 Agriculture decreases in 1910
 Transport and comer: stay rather the same

Three big waves:

1. 1780s-1820s: Industrial take-off: Britain and Belgium
2. 1840s-1870s: Follower economies: France and Germany
3. 1870s onwards: Laggard economies: Russia and Italy

Ottoman Empire: process of de-industrialisation

 There were processes of industrialization before: state-led industrialisation in
Egypt (1820s, iron, cotton) but negatively impacted by death of Muhammad Ali
in 1849.
 Industrialisation was negatively affected by political instability and import of
(cheap) European goods (reduction of domestic tax revenues). If you have
political turmoil states do not invest in industrialization but into armament,
diplomacy…
- The Greek independence, for instance
- Serbian independence
They imported for much cheaper rather than producing.
 Growing financial control of European powers as they were producing more;
forced opening and liberalisation of market.
- They could dictate the terms of global finance
- The ottomans now were forced to open and liberalize their markets.
- Asymmetric dynamic between the two

2.1- Wave 1: British leadership

BBC Two Programme “Why the Industrial Revolution Happened Here”. Professor
Jeremy Black examines one of the most extraordinary periods in British history, the
Industrial Revolution. He explains the unique economic, social and political conditions
that, by the 19th century, led to Britain becoming the richest nation on earth. It was a
time that transformed the way people think, work and play for ever.

Why?
1. Resources close to the sea: Britain had coal and iron (=basic necessities of industry)
on the seaside, that is, near the ports = easy/cheap transport. This enables a faster
distribution of resources to other parts of the world.
 Good metal to produce machinery: they had steel
 Coal to burn the metal and turn it into machinery
Development of the railway system thanks to coal and steel, why? In order to
transport coal where steal was and vice versa in order to build machinery.

2. Constitutional monarchy and (relative) political stability: no revolutions, reigns of

terror… of course conflicts, but not as relevant as the continental ones.

3. Economic liberalisation: few state monopolies, private companies were more

prevalent; positive climate for entrepreneurs; promoted early practical applications of
technology.
 Economic liberal ideas were primarily born in the UK
 Example: construction of canals and roads in order to connect urban/economic
centres, cities with factories, ports, plantations… as opposed to continental
Europe: building of roads followed military strategy.

4. Commercial class (private capital for investments): flourishing commerce and trade
 Bonus: Experience with selling products in the world market + naval fleet to
support commerce

5. A labour surplus: from 18th century onwards, a rapid growth of agricultural

productivity that encouraged early transfer of labour to industry (see land enclosure
act).

Agricultural Revolution came early in Britain – Why?

Land enclosure:
 = individually owned land (property rights) replaced the traditional, open field
system (common use)
 greater legal control of the land, larger corporations, promoted innovations and
productivity

The traditional, open field system in feudal Europe

 Ox ploughing: long strips of land; Seasonal harvests: each farmer holds land
strips in each section to have constant crop year on year; Mix of customary
(informal) and legal rights over land
 Advantages
- Facilitated an economy of scale: 2 oxen needed to pull ploughs; building of
drainage systems;
- Rights for the landless: grazing rights, use of common pastures
 Disadvantages
- Impaired freedom for introducing innovation (collective decision)
- Waste lands and common pastures were over-used
- Scattered holdings with minimal facilities, high time/energy investments
 The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from off the goose.
The law demands that we atone
When we take things we do not own
But leaves the lords and ladies fine
Who take things that are yours and mine.
The poor and wretched don’t escape
If they conspire the law to break;
This must be so but they endure
Those who conspire to make the law.
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
And geese will still a common lack
Till they go and steal it back.
–17thC protest against English enclosure

– (2.1- Wave 1)
Two main industries:
 Cotton Textile: Lancaster, Manchester:
- First power-driven machinery (spinning wool/cotton, removing the seeds
from the cotton, looming/weaving, printing of textile, development of
standardized, interchangeable parts for industrial machinery)
- Early introduction of steam engines to textile mills and factories.
 Coal, iron and steel:
- Steam engines facilitated mining (ventilation of mine shafts so miners
could go deeper; pumping fresh air into mines meant that they could have
longer working days, so they produced more).
- Increased production of coal facilitated iron industry (higher
temperatures, more pure steel, better steam engines)
- Technological innovation: more efficient process for producing steel (=
iron with reduced carbon content); more efficient steam engines.
Processes of industrialization were most present in the UK than in the rest of the
continent. The only city that comes closer to London at the moment, was Paris.
 The ability to catch up with processes of industrialization meant that there was
more incentive for brits to come and move from villages to urban centres.

Great Britain was the only country with multiple cities of over one million by 1910.
 1810: 33% lives in towns of over 2500 inhabitants
 By 1851: 50% lives in towns of over 2.500 inhabitants; 25% lives in cities of over
100.000 inhabitants

At the turn of the century, GB remained the most urbanized country, multiple urban
centres in Germany.

By 1914, we see that UK is still the only country with a city over 4 million people, and
other many rapidly become cities of 1 million inhabitants.
 Even at the turn of the century, by the beginning of WW1, UK remained the
most urbanized country.

Belgian Industrialisation
Inside the continent, Belgium became the leader in industrialization => the country
with the fastest and more intensive moment of industrialization.

1. Proto-industrial productivity
 Flanders (Ghent): linen production and cotton.
 Wallonia: metallurgy, Mons, Charleroi…

2. Close trading partner of Great Britain (cotton) because of proximity.

 Facilitated knowledge exchange, but also industrial espionage

3. Resource rich + iron ores in close proximity to coal

 When they are in proximity to one and other, they become a facilitating
element for further development.

4. Many rivers for easy transport: it connects important trade routes of the 18 th and
19th century.

5. Strategically located, connected to major European markets.

First stage: proto-industrialisation. Two axes:
1. Coal and metallurgy: Le Borinage
- 1720: use of first steam engine in coal mines of Liège, later also in
Charleroi and Mons.
- French administration (1795-1814): large-scale coal mines in “Le Borinage”
(S-W Mons); 1/2 of French annual output.
- Dutch administration (1814-1830): Cockerill-Sambre: Iron melting plant,
first blast furnace using coke (1827).
o With support from King Willem I, Cockerill-family made the switch
from textile industry (Verviers)
o Manufactured iron: rails, engines, and railway materials, rolling
mills and forging mills
2. Linen and Textile (Ghent). The transformation of all this machinery happened
primarily in the French speaking part, in the Dutch is primarily linen and
textiles.
- 1789: industrial espionage: Lieven Bauwens steals a “spinning jenny” from
Britain –Ghent . They dismantled it and built it in Belgium.
- Import of cheap cotton (via America).
- Production of uniforms for French soldiers: unlike the production in the
UK.

Spinning Jennt – Museum of Industry

Massive investments in transport:

 1820s: building of canals (e.g., Brussels-Charleroi)
 1835: Europe’s first steam-powered railway Brussels-Mechelen (to circumvent
Dutch blockade of river Scheldt; context of Belgian independence)
 1843: extended railway network. One of the countries with one of the most
integrated railways networks

Hungry forties (independence, potato blight):

 Textile industry collapsed.
  Boom of heavy industry in Wallonia and economic recovery from 1850s
onwards.

Second stage: scaling-up and specialisation (1850s onwards): scientific knowledge of

production
 From textile and iron to production of steel: experiments with new production
techniques
 The development of chemical industry: soap, soda ash…
 Ernest Solvay (1838-1922): how to produce soda ash with chemicals. He was an
academic.
- Growth of Belgian glass, soap and paper industries (all dependent on
sodium carbonate)
- Investments in European plants
- Philantropy: establishment of the “Institut des Sciences Sociales” (ULB,
1894)

Belgium was first country on the European continent to industrialise and most
intensively industrialised at the time. The changes both in the heavy industry and the
cotton one are changing how the economy and industry in Belgium was being
regulated. In addition, the IR changed the entire organization of the society: taxation,
bureaucracy, working hours, irrigations systems, urbanization, land titles…
 Social unrest and reform: in the process of all of these developments taking
place at the same time, some parts of the society would struggle.
- Already in 1791: Le Chapelier Law: prohibition of trade guilds and labour
unions. Workers have demands, think they have rights, but labour unions
were not legal.
- 1848 Revolution in Belgium: minor impact; economic recovery under
liberal government.
- 1866: legalisation of trade unions.
- 1868: Brussels host conference of International Workingmen’s Association
instead of Switzerland, where it used to take place. This talks about the
development of Belgium.
- 1869: violent repression against strikes in Seraing and Frameries.
 Karl Marx (socialist thinker):
- Ghent = “the Manchester of Belgium” and Belgium = “the paradise of
continental liberalism”. He is being ironic. He is commenting on these
rapid and intense developments in Belgium.
- The Belgian Massacres. To the Workmen of Europe and the United States
(1869):
“There exists but one country in the civilised world where every strike is
eagerly and joyously turned into a pretext for the official massacre of the
Working Class. That country of single blessedness is Belgium! the model
state of continental constitutionalism, the snug, well-hedged, little
paradise of the landlord, the capitalist, and the priest. ... The massacre of
this year does not differ from last year's massacre, but by the ghastlier
 number of its victims, the more hideous ferocity of an otherwise ridiculous
army, the noisier jubilation of the clerical and capitalist press, and the
intensified frivolity of the pretexts put forward by the governmental
butchers.”
He predicted that the workers would uprise first in Belgium and then
would spill over to the rest: it did not happen like that.

Belgium = first country on the European continent to industrialise and most

intensively industrialised at the time
 Social unrest and reform led to:
- 1885: Belgian Workers’ Party; but “plural voting” system limited its
electoral success. Those who had the multiple rights to vote were coming
from the high spheres of the society, so they were not necessarily
interested in the Belgian Workers’ Party.
- 1886: riots and violence – industrial legislation passed important for
Belgium and the whole continent: limiting working hours and prohibiting
child labour.
- Late 1890s: following electoral reform: electoral successes of socialist
parties that are prevalent in Belgium
 Belgium becomes one of the first countries in Europe to launch a
comprehensive system of social insurance
o Sickness compensation (1894), voluntary “old-age”
insurance (1900), unemployment insurance (1907)
 For a continuation of Belgian industrialisation into the present, see:
https://www.brusselstimes.com/belgium/100804/belgium-in-brief-could-
belgium-lock-down/

These are also revolutionary changes, not only machinery. They did not take place over
night, they tart in 1886 with the passing of the legislation, until 1907.

Bismarck established pension scheme, but dedicated to soldiers in combat. Belgium’s

insurance is comprehensive, not only dedicated to the military.

Revolution?
Revolution versus evolution?
 Arguments for evolution: no real spurts; gradual development aided by early
agricultural revolution (Britain) and proto-industries (Belgium)
 Arguments for revolution: it is a revolution because in terms of historical
periods is not that big of a time and also the structural change that comes as a
result in terms as organizing the economy and the society is fundamental

A bit between both: there are elements of it as a revolution in terms on how the
society changed but has more than one characteristic simply as an evolution because it
builds up on previous experiences, scientific and agricultural revolution and there were
a gradual development of these processes.
The impact of railways --- the creation of markets
 Britain: the only European country to industrialise without railway (sea ports
and canal infrastructure)
 In all other countries, industrial take-off depended on the creation of railway
networks.
- Compared to wagon, much cheaper and faster transport of goods and
raw materials.
- Crucial for connecting mines to factories, ports and consumers: the
creation of markets.

It developed very intensively in 30 years.

In 1870 there was a railway line between Bagdad and Istanbul
- Orient Express: from Istanbul to Paris.
They decrease in frequency between 1900-1930, 1930 onwards: development of the
automobiles.

2.2- Wave 2: Follower economies (1840-1870)

Second half of 19th century: acceleration and spread: follower economies.
 “Inner Europe”: proto-industrialisation (smaller organization of their industries)
and quick adoption of British technology
 Regions rather than countries: not Germany or Italy, but specific regions
- France: Normandy, extending down into the Rhine Valley of Western
Germany, upper Alsace, along the border with Switzerland
- Germany: Saxony, Lusatia, Silesia
- Elbe river (east) and Alps in the South = frontiers of this proto-
industrialisation
 Main differences between these economies
 - 2nd wave was characterised by a leading role from the government
(government as an intervening mechanism as opposed to, private
investors):national policies and vocational schools
- Besides textile and steel, growing chemical production and a gradual
focus on motorisation (regions in Germany become the quintessential
actors).

Compared to British take-off:

 Britain:
- Low start-up costs – small family ventures
- Private capital investments, limited role by the government
- Limited bank investment (only working capital for purchase of
materials/payment of wages)
- Resources close to the sea; naval fleet and canals for creation of markets
 France/Germany:
- Catching-up: adoption of British technology
- Need for technical training (as opposed to “learning on the go”). In the
case of the stealing of the spinning Jenny, it took months of training for
reassembling it and putting it to use.
- Need for greater capital investments –to support these trainings, yet
less capital available
- Need to invest in railway system to connect markets
 Greater role of the state:
1. Specialised investment banks: concentration of scarce capital within
large-scale financial institutions (France). Investors need funds and the
governments cannot help, so they created specialized investment banks
from which you can borrow and then invest in it.
2. Technical education: supply of skilled labour force to work the
machinery (Germany)

France: Napoleon III (1850-71)

 Diagnosis = capital shortage, bureaucratic limitations to railway development
 Solution
- Railway development: if the government cannot help it is necessary an
opening up to long-term private concessions; reduction of
administrative controls.
- Investment banks: Crédit Mobilier (1852); a growth-conscious bank,
careful investments; predominantly providing loans to railway
developers.
- Shift from textile industry to more capital-intensive iron and steel
industry, metal fabrication, coalmining.
- Defeat in Franco-Prussian war; economic regression 1870s; many
bankers invested overseas.

Germany combines the lessons learnt from Britain and France

1. New type of investment banks:
 - Extends loans to both railway capitalists (France) and industrialists
(British experience).
- Buys shares in companies; building up equity interests (proportional
sharing in profits).
- Since 1600s: development of formal bonds/stocks via Dutch East-India
Company (the starting point of global finance/capitalism), 1611
Amsterdam stock market.
- Placed directors on the boards of industrial companies.
Implications for the market & industrialisation:
- Closer bond industry-banking; vertical integration bank sector in the
market.
- Greater influence banking: pushed industrial clients towards best-
practice technologies; debt = force industrialists to join cartel
associations (fixed prices; secure profits, safer loans); stable markets.
2. Massive investment in educational system – technical training
- Building on already extensive regional educational systems built on the 18th
century.
- Development of national educational system; technical education that had
started throughout the French Revolution.
- 1872-1914: educational expenditure as high as the national budget for the
navy and imperial army.

Implications for the market & industrialisation:

 Closely integrated relations between science and industry
- Large laboratories facilitating rapid practical applications of
technological and chemical advances.
- While technical/chemical pioneers were often British/French, practical
applications were often German to these machineries.
We tend to think about education as something has results only on the long
run.
Creating vocational training takes years to show its results but proved in the
end it was the most clever thing to do.

There was conflict and uprising against these developments. But it is not a negative
thing, there is a potential in it. When we have a point to be conflictual about, we
renegotiate the terms of our agreements, and industrialization like nationalism like
modernity are not or bad in and out themselves, is what we make of them.
A lot of this discontent was because it was unknown, and what was known did not
convince a certain part of the population, which is normal.

Great Depression (1873-1896) – deflation = “First international financial crisis”:

bursting of the credit bubble: massive loans; but shaky economic fundamentals (supply
outweigh demand).
 Causes:
- Early 1870s: Massive investments and credit loans: Germany was still
paying French war reparations payments.
- The “American Commercial Invasion”: low cost import of wheat,
kerosene, manufactured food threatened European production.
 1873: Bank Panic: continental banks and railway companies tumbled, the panic
of the banks is associated that whenever there is deflation people go to the
banks and take out their money. It may have that the bank does not have that
liquidity, which creates that panic.
 Largest manufacturing companies had enough capital reserves to finance
continuing growth, many smaller industrial firms went bankrupt, large
companies bought out their competitors at low prices.
 High levels of unemployment, demand for manufactured food and goods fell
back.

2.3- Wave 3: Laggard economies (1890-1900)

After Crimean War (1854-6), between Russia and the Ottomans, Russia realises that
it needs to industrialise to remain great European power. However the political and
social conditions in Russia traditionally have never been on pair with the UK or
Germany.
 Autocratic regime; fearful of social change: state-led industrialisation
1. 1861= End of serfdom but covert exercise in social control
- Village commune controlled land supplies and distributed it to
peasants based on family size; often smaller land holdings than
before.
 - Limited peasant mobility: high debt (49 years to repay end of
serfdom), internal passport system (mobility to move and invest
both inside Russia and outside was not well-developed).
2. State controlled industrialisation, but also relied on the import of Western
technology instead of creating them, attracting European investors
specially when they were trying to develop their railway system.
3. Further social reform, following revolutionary unrest (1905): Fear of social
change
- Promotion of large-scale farming; introduction of village craft
industries
- Agricultural education: methods of land improvement; lines of
affordable credit for peasants
- End of 49 years serf redemption system
1890s: bad harvest limit fiscal tribute from countryside; unable to repay
Western debts.
Because of these very careful measurements by 1914: Russia remains,
despite industrialisation, Russia remained largely an agricultural based
society.

The type of socio-political context also dictates the types of economic and financial
measures they take:

Agriculture in Russia in 1850: 75; in 1910: 60. Significantly larger share of national
output in comparison to the other countries.

3. Impact of industrialization
Revolution in transportation
 Macadam roads: John McAdam (Scotland, 1815) developed a durable road
surface made of crushed stones cemented by stone dust and water. They
shortened distance for vehicles in between European cities.
 Water canals: 1869= the great Suez Canal (linking Mediterranean Sea with the
Indian Ocean by way of the Red Sea).
  Railroads: development of steam engine and improvement of quality of iron;
massive investments in railways.
 Aircraft: zeppelins and gliders, the overseas are much more reachable.
 Steamships and steel ships: the trips between north America and Europe slowly
went from 20 days to 8 days to 3 days.
- 1807: the Clermont: first economically successful steamship; Hudson
river connecting New York to Albany
- 1816: first steamship crosses the English Channel
- 1833: the Canadian Royal William crosses the Atlantic (taking 20 days)
- 1840: regular passenger service by steamship from Liverpool to Boston
- 1860: more cost efficient steamships; increasingly also used for freight;
end of sailing ships

All of these took a development in industry, proliferation of industrial production and

investment in education (engineers, mechanicals…) as they needed to be trained
accordingly.

Electricity and petroleum

 During most of the 19th century: steam engine provided power; only by the
end of 19th century: electricity and petroleum
 Michael Faraday (electric generator, 1831): factories start to work longer, so
there is social unrest to regulate working hours; and Nikola Tesla (method for
long-distance transmission of electric power; design of modern electric system)
 Thomas E. Edison (US): 1879: first commercially successful electric light bulb;
Electrification of major urban centres in US and Europe (replacing kerosene and
gas lighting); powering of industrial machinery.
 Rudolf Diesel (Germany): 1892: patented an engine that burned oil directly in
its cylinders to produce power (as opposed to steam).
 1890s: gasoline-driven motorcycles & automobiles (trucks and buses, followed
by passenger cars): Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Friedrich Benz.

Technology developments facilitate mass communication

 Paper machine & industrial printing: expansion of newspaper and book
publishing, rising literacy rates; demands for mass political participation
 Telegraph: 1836: Samuel F.B. Morse (US), invented the telegraph; 1841: first
telegraph sent from Washington to Baltimore; 1851: Thanks to steelships a
telegraph cable was laid beneath the English Channel, linking GB with the
European continent; 1866 trans-Atlantic cable
 Mail delivery: 1840: Britain, creation of the penny post; 1874: Universal Postal
Union; thanks to railway: international delivery of mail
 The telephone: 1876: Alexander Graham Bell (US) invented the telephone;
1884 telephone service between New York and Boston; by 1890s: shaping of a
European network
 The radio: 1890s: Guglielmo Marconi: experiments in wireless telegraphy
(electromagnetic waves) developed into radio
All of these are the result of a set of processes, innovations and developments
associated with the industrial revolution. We are tempted to call them a revolution, as
they helped changing the world as we knew it.

Social impact: Leisure time

1. Workshop discipline and “time thrift”: “Saint Monday” gradually replaced by a
conception of weekend (+ five day work week). Saint Monday: you worked 6
days, from Monday to Saturday and rest on Sunday. Going to work on A
Monday became a drag, so it was slowly replaced by the weekend. This came
with these demands of regulating labour work.
“the necessity of early rising would reduce the poor to a necessity of going to
bed betime (on time); and thereby prevent the danger of midnight revels” –
Reverand J. Clayton’s 1755 pamphlet Friendly Advise to the Poor.
2. Shift in workers’ demands: from control over working conditions (early 19th
century) to demands for 40-hour work week (mid 19th century). The working
hours per week went up to 85, depending on the sector you were working on.
= instrumentalisation of work; a means for enjoyment of life elsewhere

The social life and the leisure time was organized by the clock of the factory: you work
these hours, you have leisure these hours.

Organisation of the family

 The nuclear family
 Rise of the middle-class: cult of domesticity, the father does to the factory,
the mother takes care of the household and the kids, and there is a 5 day
working week and there is a weekend for the family and the Church.
 Middle-class ideal conflicted with labour class reality: family remained an
“economic unit"
- Child labour + reliance on extended family
- Gender trouble: women’s presence in factories tended to drive
down wages because they were paid less, provoked harassment
and abuse inside the factories
- Introduction of the “working moms”: double burden: they worked
and have to take care of their family.

“...When we Home ar come, Alas! We find our work but just begun; So many things
for our attendance call, had we ten hands, we could employ them all. Our children
put to bed, with greatest care. We all things for your coming home prepare: you sup,
and go to bed without delay, and rest yourselves till the ensuing day. While we, alas!
But little sleep can have, because our froward children cry and rave... In ev’ry work
(we) take our proper share, and from the time that harvest doth begin until the corn
be cut and carry’d in, our toil and labour’s daily so extreme that we have hardly ever
time to dream” – Testimony of Mary Collier, a “Washer-woman”, 1739
4. Conclusion
Slow process; no real spurts (besides Russia); closely linked to agricultural revolution
(18th C) and regional proto-industries.

Regionally driven in continental Europe, but accelerated by national government

policies.

By 1900 agriculture and rural living still shaping much of everyday life of the
Europeans in the continent (British exception, high levels of urbanization & industry
employment)

Co-existence of industry, agriculture and craft manufacture in large parts of Europe

(British exception, net importer of foods)

A gradual and accumulative process, something that continued gradually (shortening

distances between cities, on building better shifts or aircraft… and continues even
today); but it was unfinished by 1914, WWI. Continued but it was again stopped by
WWII.

Questions to help you study

The teacher is interested in patterns:
- Why Britain was ahead of everyone else?
- What did Germany or France did differently in the process of industrialization?
- Not interested in knowing dates

Questions:
 Describe the three big waves of industrialisation.
 Why did Britain take the lead in industrialisation? What explains Belgium’s early
industrialisation?
 What role did national governments play in the three waves of
industrialisation?
 What is the relationship between industrialisation and banking?
 What are the main differences between the first and second wave of
industrialisation?
 What was the impact of industrialisation on the organisation of the family?
 ...