The Industrial Revolution deserves the name with which historians have tagged it.

It brought about
thorough and lasting transformations, not just in business and economics but in the basic structures
of society. Before industrialization, when the most significant economic activities in most European
countries were small-scale farming and artisan handicrafts, social structures remained essentially as
they had been during the Middle Ages. The advent of industrial development revamped patterns of
human settlement, labor, and family life. The changes set in motion by industrialization ushered
Europe, the United States of America, and much of the world into the modern era.

Most historians place the origin of the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain in the middle decades of
the 18th century. In the British Isles and most of Europe at this time, most social activity took place in
small and medium-sized villages. People rarely traveled far beyond their home village. During the
18th century, the population of Britain and other European countries began rising significantly.
Among the first signs of economic transformation was an increase in agricultural productivity, making
it possible to feed this rising population. The combination of these factors led to profound changes in
how rural people lived. Gradually, large-scale mechanized agriculture to serve the market began to
overtake the kinds of subsistence farming most peasants had practiced for generations.
The enclosure movement, which converted commonly held grazing lands into fenced-off private
property, added to the new pressures facing the poor, rural majority.

The population increase added to the number of people facing difficulties making a living on the
land. Many left their agrarian lives behind and headed for towns and cities to find employment.
Advances in industry and the growth of factory production accelerated the trend toward
urbanization in Britain. Industrial cities like Manchester and Leeds grew dramatically over the course
of a few short decades. In 1800, about 20 percent of the British population lived in urban areas. By
the middle of the nineteenth century, that proportion had risen to 50 percent. Other Western
European lands such as France, the Netherlands, and Germany also experienced an increase in urban
populations, albeit, more slowly. These changes thoroughly disrupted longstanding patterns in social
relationships that dated back to medieval times.

The nature of work in the new urban industries also had significant social impact. Before
the Industrial Revolution, artisans with specialized skills produced most of Europe’s manufactured
goods. Their work was governed by the traditions of their craft and the limits of available resources.
Human and animal muscle and the waterwheel were the era’s main energy sources. With the coming
of factory-based industry, the coal-fired steam engine and other machinery set a new, faster pace for
labor. In the factories, coal mines, and other workplaces, the hours were very long, and the
conditions, generally, dismal and dangerous. The size and scope of manufacturing enterprises
continued to increase throughout the 19th century as Europe, the United States, and other parts of
the world industrialized. Larger firms that could achieve economies of scale held an advantage in the
competitive sphere of international trade. In the industrializing world, the new means of production
meant the demise of earlier, slower modes of labor and life.

The most insidious consequences of the new conditions may have been those affecting the most
basic social unit: the family. The preindustrial family was fundamentally both a social and an
economic unit. Married couples and their children often worked side by side on a family farm or in a
shop, or otherwise divided their labor for the family’s overall benefit. It was also common in 18th-
century Great Britain for women and men to work in their rural homes doing jobs such as textile
spinning and weaving on a piecework basis for merchant owners. This decentralized form of
employment was called the “putting-out” or domestic system. However, the rise of factory
production and industrial cities meant a separation of the home from the workplace for most male
workers. Very often, the need for income motivated men to leave their families behind for jobs in the
city. Even without geographic separation, many types of industrial jobs were so demanding that they
left little downtime for workers to spend preserving the relational bonds we associate with family
life.

Women also worked outside the home. Unmarried women, in particular, often worked as domestic
servants. Many British women, including mothers, were employed in the textile mills to help their
families make ends meet. Child labor was also rampant in the textile industry during the first century
of industrialization. Factory owners appreciated having workers whose fingers were small enough to
manipulate delicately threaded machinery. Despite their importance to the industry’s output, these
women and children were paid very little and were routinely compelled to work 16 hours per day or
longer. Their jobs were perceived as less skilled than those of their male co-workers, although the
working conditions were sometimes equally dangerous.

The United States underwent many of the same social transformations arising from industrialization.
U.S. manufacturing began in earnest after the nation broke from England in the 1770s. An embargo
on foreign imports during the presidency of Thomas Jefferson, and a British blockade of the Atlantic
seaboard during the War of 1812, spurred domestic production. The United States became one of
the world’s leading economic powers by the 1830s.

In the first half century after U.S. independence, a major proportion of the nation’s labor force
shifted from the agricultural to the manufacturing sector. As in Great Britain, the textile industry led
the way toward mechanization. In many industries, though, home-based production and artisan craft
traditions gave way to wage labor in larger, machine-powered operations. Industrialization, along
with great strides in transportation, drove the growth of U.S. cities and a rapidly expanding market
economy. It also shaped the development of a large working class in U.S. society, leading eventually
to labor struggles and strikes led by working men and women.

By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Britain, the United States, and other industrialized nations
were debating and enacting reform laws to limit some of the worst abuses of the factory system.
However, similarly oppressive labor conditions arose in many parts of the world as their economies
industrialized in the 20th and 21st centuries. The reorganization of daily life wrought
by industrialization had effects that weakened the material basis for the institutions of the family and
the community. These effects were so lasting that they can still be felt in the present day—even as
developed societies have shifted into an era that scholars describe as “postindustrial.”
Industrial Revolution, in modern history, the process of change from an agrarian and handicraft
economy to one dominated by industry and machine manufacturing. These technological changes
introduced novel ways of working and living and fundamentally transformed society. This process
began in Britain in the 18th century and from there spread to other parts of the world. Although
used earlier by French writers, the term Industrial Revolution was first popularized by the English
economic historian Arnold Toynbee (1852–83) to describe Britain’s economic development from
1760 to 1840. Since Toynbee’s time the term has been more broadly applied as a process of
economic transformation than as a period of time in a particular setting. This explains why some
areas, such as China and India, did not begin their first industrial revolutions until the 20th century,
while others, such as the United States and western Europe, began undergoing “second” industrial
revolutions by the late 19th century.

A brief treatment of the Industrial Revolution follows. For full treatment of the Industrial Revolution
as it occurred in Europe, see Europe, history of: The Industrial Revolution.

(Read James Watt’s 1819 Britannica essay on the steam engine.)

Characteristics of the Industrial Revolution

How the Industrial Revolution changed the world

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The main features involved in the Industrial Revolution were technological, socioeconomic, and
cultural. The technological changes included the following: (1) the use of new basic materials,
chiefly iron and steel, (2) the use of new energy sources, including both fuels and motive power, such
as coal, the steam engine, electricity, petroleum, and the internal-combustion engine, (3)
the invention of new machines, such as the spinning jenny and the power loom that permitted
increased production with a smaller expenditure of human energy, (4) a new organization of work
known as the factory system, which entailed increased division of labour and specialization of
function, (5) important developments in transportation and communication, including the
steam locomotive, steamship, automobile, airplane, telegraph, and radio, and (6) the increasing
application of science to industry. These technological changes made possible a tremendously
increased use of natural resources and the mass production of manufactured goods.

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Britannica Quiz

Pop Quiz: 15 Things to Know About the Industrial Revolution

There were also many new developments in nonindustrial spheres, including the following: (1)
agricultural improvements that made possible the provision of food for a larger nonagricultural
population, (2) economic changes that resulted in a wider distribution of wealth, the decline
of land as a source of wealth in the face of rising industrial production, and increased international
trade, (3) political changes reflecting the shift in economic power, as well as new state policies
corresponding to the needs of an industrialized society, (4) sweeping social changes, including the
growth of cities, the development of working-class movements, and the emergence of new patterns
of authority, and (5) cultural transformations of a broad order. Workers acquired new and distinctive
skills, and their relation to their tasks shifted; instead of being craftsmen working with hand tools,
they became machine operators, subject to factory discipline. Finally, there was a psychological
change: confidence in the ability to use resources and to master nature was heightened.

The first Industrial Revolution

Industrial Revolution

A map depicting the spread of the Industrial Revolution through Europe in the 19th century.(more)

In the period 1760 to 1830 the Industrial Revolution was largely confined to Britain. Aware of their
head start, the British forbade the export of machinery, skilled workers,
and manufacturing techniques. The British monopoly could not last forever, especially since some
Britons saw profitable industrial opportunities abroad, while continental European businessmen
sought to lure British know-how to their countries. Two Englishmen, William and John Cockerill,
brought the Industrial Revolution to Belgium by developing machine shops at Liège (c. 1807), and
Belgium became the first country in continental Europe to be transformed economically. Like its
British progenitor, the Belgian Industrial Revolution centred in iron, coal, and textiles.

France was more slowly and less thoroughly industrialized than either Britain or Belgium. While
Britain was establishing its industrial leadership, France was immersed in its Revolution, and the
uncertain political situation discouraged large investments in industrial innovations. By 1848 France
had become an industrial power, but, despite great growth under the Second Empire, it remained
behind Britain.
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Other European countries lagged far behind. Their bourgeoisie lacked the wealth, power, and
opportunities of their British, French, and Belgian counterparts. Political conditions in the other
nations also hindered industrial expansion. Germany, for example, despite vast resources of coal and
iron, did not begin its industrial expansion until after national unity was achieved in 1870. Once
begun, Germany’s industrial production grew so rapidly that by the turn of the century that nation
was outproducing Britain in steel and had become the world leader in the chemical industries. The
rise of U.S. industrial power in the 19th and 20th centuries also far outstripped European efforts.
And Japan too joined the Industrial Revolution with striking success.

The eastern European countries were behind early in the 20th century. It was not until the five-year
plans that the Soviet Union became a major industrial power, telescoping into a few decades the
industrialization that had taken a century and a half in Britain. The mid-20th century witnessed the
spread of the Industrial Revolution into hitherto nonindustrialized areas such as China and India.

The technological and economic aspects of the Industrial Revolution brought about significant
sociocultural changes. In its initial stages it seemed to deepen labourers’ poverty and misery. Their
employment and subsistence became dependent on costly means of production that few people
could afford to own. Job security was lacking: workers were frequently displaced by technological
improvements and a large labour pool. Lack of worker protections and regulations meant long work
hours for miserable wages, living in unsanitary tenements, and exploitation and abuse in the
workplace. But even as problems arose, so too did new ideas that aimed to address them. These
ideas pushed innovations and regulations that provided people with more material conveniences
while also enabling them to produce more, travel faster, and communicate more rapidly.

The second Industrial Revolution

Women working machines at the American Woolen Company, Boston, c. 1912.(more)

Despite considerable overlapping with the “old,” there was mounting evidence for a “new” Industrial
Revolution in the late 19th and 20th centuries. In terms of basic materials, modern industry began to
exploit many natural and synthetic resources not hitherto utilized: lighter metals, rare earths,
new alloys, and synthetic products such as plastics, as well as new energy sources. Combined with
these were developments in machines, tools, and computers that gave rise to the automatic factory.
Although some segments of industry were almost completely mechanized in the early to mid-19th
century, automatic operation, as distinct from the assembly line, first achieved major significance in
the second half of the 20th century.

Ownership of the means of production also underwent changes. The oligarchical ownership of the
means of production that characterized the Industrial Revolution in the early to mid-19th century
gave way to a wider distribution of ownership through purchase of common stocks by individuals and
by institutions such as insurance companies. In the first half of the 20th century, many countries of
Europe socialized basic sectors of their economies. There was also during that period a change in
political theories: instead of the laissez-faire ideas that dominated the economic and social thought
of the classical Industrial Revolution, governments generally moved into the social and economic
realm to meet the needs of their more complex industrial societies. That trend was reversed in
the United States and the United Kingdom beginning in the 1980s.