HIST 100: Part 8

The Industrial Revolution

Dr. Peter Stearns

Introduction

Here’s the basic problem we’ll be working on in this session: When we think Industrial Revolution, we think machines, work and factories. When we think Western civilization, we think artistic forms, science, Christianity, and political patterns. How do the two fit together? What was Western about industrialization, and how did it relate to art, religion and politics? How did it relate to Western values, and how did it relocate to the West in the world. This is a big set of connections to make, and not a familiar one: but it actually leads down interesting paths.

I’ve been studying the Industrial Revolution for years. I find its implications fascinating in terms of human change, and the adaptations and limitations of modern life. Industrial issues still define life today, as we think about work, or family, or even the nature of politics. This discussion deals with these implications, in the particular context of Western civilization. Here’s an outline of how we’ll proceed. We’ll work first on when and what the industrial revolution was.  Then, on what caused it and what was Western about it.  Then on what consequences it had and what it did to Western civilization in turn.

We can begin with a very specific little story. In the 1830s a French textile manufacturer began a practice of decorating the most productive machine each week with a garland of flowers. Pretty silly, of course, since the flowers must have wilted fast. But think of the values involved: machines, not the workers, now seemed to come first. Productivity, not Western religion or art or royal power, now seemed the basis of modern life. Tracing these new priorities is central to figuring out what the industrial revolution was and is all about, as one of the great changes in human history.

Overview

The Industrial Revolution began first in Great Britain about 1760, and soon spread to other parts of Western civilization and the United States. Here’s the early chronology on two screens in Britain and France, involving inventions and new ideas and policies. The Industrial Revolution stretched out over many decades, from the time new machines were first significantly applied to production to the time the bulk of the population was directly affected by industrial processes.

Here’s the larger chronology, again on two screens. Note how the transformation in terms of full impact usually takes 80-100 years. Note also that the industrial revolution did not begin tidily, at a single point in time, throughout Western civilization. Key dates for the significant introduction of new machinery fan out over more than half a century. But most major Western societies became involved pretty quickly. This means that they shared key ingredients and needs for industrialization, and/ or that they had particularly good channels of communication that would allow rapid imitation of developments elsewhere within the civilization. Belgium, France and the United States, for example, all began industrialization by importing machines from England–smuggling them, actually, for the British tried to keep a monopoly on innovation for a time.

You can also use maps to chart the spread of industrialization, looking at industrial centers and rail lines first in Western society and then beyond it. What parts of Western civilization were slow to industrialize? (Note the spread east, but more slowly south.)

So what is the core definition? The industrial revolution centered on a massive increase in production, and related acceleration of transportation, communication and sales capacities. The heart of this increase was new technology, particularly technology based on coal or waterpower instead of human or animal power.

Two examples, from the 18^th century: You’re looking at a flying shuttle, a device that would automatically carry the thread on a weaving loom across the fibers–the machine was called the flying shuttle–allowed one weaver to run a loom without an assistant. Result: at least 50% more cloth production per worker. Look next at a spinning machine where the spindles turned on the basis of power supplied from a steam engine that was even more productive--a given worker could produce more than 100 times as much thread as purely manual workers had done.

Other new technologies applied to the economy soon included steam locomotives, like “Puffing Billy” here, plus ships, and coal-based metallurgical operations that expanded the amount of metal produced.

The massive increase of production also resulted from new work arrangements, alongside the dramatic new technology. The factory system quickly arose, partly because the new power equipment required a concentration of workers near the engines. Here’s an early steel plant in Germany, and now one in France. But factories had their own advantages for production, in allowing more specialized work and more top-down direction and discipline of workers. Fairly steady technology change, like the Bessemer process here, combined factories and machines. New organization spread to other areas. For example, the first department store opened in Paris in the 1830s. Here too, larger arrangements and more specialization facilitated operations, for with more production, innovation was essential in sales well.

What was revolutionary about the industrial revolution comes through in dry statistics about production levels, expansion of steam engines, spread of railway lines, and factory size. Here are stats on increased textile output. Here’s a real revolution in these categories, over a several-decade period. Take a look at iron and steel growth rates, again involving huge rates of growth. Another set of statistics brings in people directly: rates of urbanization. The screens here show growth rates. Throughout the industrial West, city growth accelerated greatly as production and distribution concentrated increasingly in cities. Between the mid-19^th and the early 20^th centuries, most Western societies would become half urban, the first time this had ever happened in history. Urban growth was about as dramatic as product growth. It meant in turn that during the industrial revolution literally millions of people abandoned a fairly traditional life in the countryside, to cast their lot with cities–a huge change in human terms. Industrial cities themselves changed the landscape, like the British city of Stockport here, with smokestacks becoming the new urban symbol, dominating the countryside; and with new areas of air and water pollution surrounding the cities.

The Industrial Revolution was only the second basic change in the economic context for human life in history to that point–the first being the shift from hunting and gathering to agriculture, which occurred long before Western civilization had even emerged. Correspondingly, the amount of production, and particularly manufactured goods, per capita also began to rise beyond historic precedent. And though this did not mean wealth for everyone, it was also a revolutionary change. Technology, organization, manufacturing, and total product--these were the key features of the industrial revolution itself.

What caused the Industrial Revolution? Obviously, a number of factors combined–there is no simple one-shot explanation. Obviously also, historians debate this combination. Causation is a vital part of historical analysis, helping to explain what a huge change like industrialization means. But causes cannot be retested in a laboratory, which makes historical analysis more challenging than its counterpart in science.

Causes

Here’s how we’ll organize this section on causes. There are three kinds of debates, and they relate to how the industrial revolution fits into the history of Western civilization. For along with explaining why the industrial revolution took shape, we must also explain why Western civilization established such an industrial lead over the rest of the world. 

The first debate is the simplest. The industrial revolution depended on several preconditions, which were not however real causes. You’re seeing on two screens a list of what a society needs to industrialize, but not all these factors are causes. It is very difficult to industrialize without ready access to basic raw materials, and in the initial industrial revolution this meant coal and iron above all. Many parts of Europe – particularly Britain, Belgium, northern France and Germany – had excellent holdings of coal and iron, often fairly close to each other. This was vital for industrialization – but obviously it did not cause it, because the minerals had been in the ground for ages without this use emerging. Iron and coal thus did not cause industrialization, for they did not change; but they were necessary nonetheless, and they help explain why Europe came first compared, say, to Japan, or the Middle East, or several other places.

The second debate is central: it involves a tension between European and global causes. Historians long assumed that the industrial revolution flowed from internal factors primarily.

Against this view of some special Western-ness comes an argument that emphasizes global factors. Industrialization was a global event. Europe’s special place was the result of power position, nothing more. Europe had already pushed its way toward dominance in world trade. It learned from this how more money could be made from exporting manufactured goods, and importing cheaper raw materials. Industrialization merely extended this process, without any special Western values, save perhaps greed and commercial success, involved at all. Europe had also gained profits from previous world trade, including its sponsorship of the Atlantic slave trade. Profits accumulated into available capital, which made it much easier to invest in expensive and initially risky new equipment like steam engines. Again, no special Western values, just the unusual concentration of global advantage. And industrialization extended the economic power politics game. The industrial West increased its exploitation of other parts of the world, increasing poverty as its own wealth expanded. Industrialization flowed from economic power politics, nothing more, even though it did have revolutionary results.

Of course the western and global explanations approaches can be combined. The West, after all, was not the first society to benefit from world trade, but it was the first to industrialize. Sometimes also, special western policies helped trigger the global impact. For example, England encountered the charms of cotton cloth as it penetrated India in the 18^th century. Soon it was trying to build a domestic cotton industry through laws that made Indian cotton imports more difficult; and this in turn led to massive unemployment in India, even as British cotton industrialization proceeded. Here is a global factor, but combined with a targeted colonial policy that reflects at least a certain kind of 18^th-century Western values.  But even if combining causes is possible, there is still the question of emphasis and priority. Did industrialization really flow from Western distinctiveness, or is it better seen as a global response? Which approach strikes you as having the richer explanatory power?

Finally, there is a question of values vs. other factors, even where largely Western causes are concerned. How much was a Western spirit involved vs. impersonal factors. Let’s focus here on two questions: first, again, what caused the industrial revolution, but also, what caused it to occur in the 18^th and early 19^th centuries. For obviously Western culture had not done the trick earlier; there must be some new ingredients. Here on the screen are three related Western values type causes. First, for some reason Westerners became particularly inventive. Obviously a number of English, and to some degree French and American, people did begin to produce new inventions, including the steam engine. Most of them were artisans. Was there some sort of special Western spirit that underlay their inventions? By itself this one probably doesn’t work too well, because it doesn’t explain the timing.

So what about the huge cultural change involved in the scientific revolution and enlightenment. THIS IS western values type cause number two.  Here were new sources of ideas about manipulating nature and causing material progress – including the idea that material progress was both possible and good. This new spirit, and some of the new scientific knowledge, probably did move some of the inventors.James Watt, the inventor of the steam engine, has some knowledge of scientific work on gasses. Many of the leading early businessmen were full of Enlightenment ideas about progress.

Add to this, changes in government policy, Western spirit cause number three, within the Western context of longstanding military and economic rivalries.   The British government began to do more things to benefit business, such as road paving, canal building, and the formation of a national bank. Governments in France and elsewhere did the same, and the French Revolution ultimately encouraged these new purposes. In France, for example, government-sponsored engineering schools improved. We have seen that governments were also involved in tariff policies to encourage industry and reduce competition from other parts of the world. Governments also stopped restricting new technology, particularly by abolishing guild systems. They also began to ban worker organizations that might impede business initiative, using police to break up protest.  It is vital to note that government action was part of the policy process, and not simply leaving businessmen free to pursue their own interests. For example, governments everywhere took huge initiatives to launch railroad development, particularly in places like France, Germany and the United States, even though private businessmen might ultimately run the railroads. New policies thus cut in two directions: freeing businessmen in new ways but also actively intervening in the economy in favor of industrial growth.

So: inventors and entrepreneurs, inspired by new knowledge and a new spirit of zeal, were aided further by changes in government policy. What more could you want for causation?

But don’t forget the other side: more anonymous forces that may better explain why people changed behavior – including inventing new techniques. Here are the highlights on the impersonal factors side as on the chart. We don’t need some vague new spirit argument at all, for more concrete changes explain new behavior. Economic forces, not the essence of Western civilization, account for what happened.  We have seen that market opportunities improved, thanks to the expansion of European-dominated overseas trade and also new levels of consumerism at home, particularly in areas like textiles and household wares. Capital improved, thanks to overseas trade, thus facilitating new business behavior whether there were new ideas around or not. Above all, population began to expand rapidly, thanks to the impact of newly adopted crops such as the potato. Look at the huge population surge before and during the industrial revolution. West European population grew 50 to 100% in the last half of the 18^th century. What did this do? It forced many rural workers to realize that they could no longer count on access to the land. This in turn, rather than any new ideas, explains why there was a labor force available – reluctantly available – to work in unpleasant new factories with noisy and dangerous new equipment. It’s easy to ignore workers in the industrialization process, as if they automatically accepted whatever was thrown at them, but in fact their willingness to participate was crucial. And this willingness resulted from the inescapable prod of population growth and land shortage. And dramatic population growth had further effects.  It forced new behavior among some businessmen. Jean Schlumberger, in eastern France, was a typical modest manufacturer in the 1760s, content to use established methods. But he had ten children, and none of them died – this was how population expansion affected him personally. To provide for them according to traditional middle-class standards, he began to grow his business and reluctantly to adopt some of the new textile manufacturing equipment. Soon he was a leading industrialist, and two of his sons took the process even further, becoming dynamic entrepreneurs. You don’t really need Western values here, just the driving force of population and its own causes in impersonal new foods like the potato.

But again, the debate: After all, other societies have experienced rapid population growth without generating an industrial revolution. Indeed, Western Europe had rapid population growth earlier in its history – for example, 13^th-14^th centuries – and it led to economic problems more than innovation. So maybe some less anonymous factors have to be granted.

Two final points about causes, which also show why the discussion of causation is important. First, in the long run it also has become clear that Western values are not the only basis for successful industrialization. Japan began to industrialize in the late 19^th century, and it proved very successful against great odds. It imported some Western ideas, particularly Western science, and of course it could and did copy Western technology and aspects of factory organization. But it continued to use older Confucian values and a strong government role, and even today has a distinctive approach to economic issues. Japan’s success does not prove that Western values did not cause initial industrialization, but they raise a note of caution.

But finally, whatever the mix of causes you think works best, it’s important to realize that, because of the West’s industrial success, Westerners have long believed that distinctive aspects of their civilization do provide the basis for industrialization. On the strength of this, Western leaders and observers have frequently told other societies what they need to do – i.e., become more like the West culturally and politically – if they have any hope for industrial success. They criticized other societies for falling short of Western qualities in the 19^th century, and they have been doing it again during the past decade. Needless to say, leaders in other regions don’t necessarily like this approach. Is the approach at least accurate, in terms of what it takes to industrialize?

Consequences

We now turn to the consequences of industrialization, which really raises the most important set of issues of all.  The economic definition of industrialization, in terms of production, technology and factories, is just the tip of the iceberg. The industrial revolution had huge consequences in the West and in the world from the early 19^th century onward. We’re still working out some of these consequences today, two centuries later. Historical understanding of our own world makes it crucial to explore what industrialization did to people’s lives and to broader social patterns. And we need to apply Western civilization questions here too: how did the consequences of industrialization fit with other Western patterns? We will see that Westerners tried to keep control of industrial life in terms of some recognizable styles and values, but we may decide that they were unable to do so, becoming more industrial than Western in the process.

First, the impact on basic human life. The reason the industrial revolution was so important, in terms of the human experience, is because it substantially altered the nature of work life and of family life. We need to look at these aspects before we examine the more familiar Western civilization categories like religion or politics.

People came to work in the factories or stores from a peasant or craft background. Not everything about the new work setting necessarily surprised them. They were accustomed to having children work, and they were accustomed to long hours on the job. But there were some startling new features. Machines were one: they were often dangerous, they were usually very noisy, and they moved fast, requiring workers to keep up a much more intense pace than they were accustomed to in more traditional jobs. Pace of work and nervous tension became a standard theme in industrial work life.

Along with nervous pace, supervision was another theme. With the important exception of many slave systems, most traditional workers had enjoyed a period of life in which they were their own boss, in terms of daily activities. In the factories and department stores, this changed: most people now spent their whole lives under the direction of others, and active supervision increased as well. Foremen carefully monitored the motions of factory workers.

Skill and pride also often fell victim to the new work systems. The typical industrial worker did a small part of an operation; he or she did not see the whole product. Many workers, particularly from a craft background, felt their skills had deteriorated. As industrial technology improved, even established factory workers found what had been important skill levels diminished into semi-skilled operations, which required little training and provided little job security. Some observers argued that these changes produced a profound worker alienation, in which it was difficult to find meaning in work.

Intense pace, heavy supervision, and reduction in skill added up to powerful issues in the industrial workplace. They affected factory workers most intensely, but also, as new machines spread, touched secretaries, salespeople, skilled construction workers, even farmers.

Throughout the industrialization process, workers commented on the job changes they saw around them. Early on, some sought to attack machines directly, arguing that everyone would be better off if the industrial revolution could be rolled back. These reactions, called Luddism after a series of machine-breaking protests in England between 1810 and 1820, were rarely successful, but they could be intense.

There were of course some bright spots, as on this joy chart. Some workers enjoyed factories as a place to meet new people. Others viewed factory jobs as temporary, planning to return to the countryside or get married. Others believed that higher earnings could compensate for reduced work satisfaction. Earnings were very low for most workers in early industrialization, which concealed this option, but gradually they tended to improve. Trading work satisfaction for a better material life off the job became a common impulse, though it was not automation.

But even after industrialization was well underway, around 1900, workers could bitterly lament their lives, to the point of deep despair. You can read about worker reactions from what workers themselves said and wrote, in protest movements, letters and autobiographies. Around targets like those shown here. A key task of historical interpretation involves explaining why different workers reacted differently, and what reactions were most typical and most important. Overall, workers had to learn to adjust to work they found less engaging than what people had been accustomed to in pre-industrial societies. This adjustment involved new interests, for example in consumer goods, but also new protests, and new unhappiness. Has modern Western society even today managed an appropriate definition of work?

A second area, even more important than work, that was deeply affected by the industrial revolution was family life. Images of family life from the industrial period are varied. Workers in the cities faced crowded conditions and poverty, which obviously affected family life. Middle-class folks liked to convey images of united, supportive families. But even successful families were touched by deep change.  Industrialization’s impact involved two simple but profound alterations. These alterations operated beneath the surface of the diverse images of industrial family life.  We’re still dealing with the ramifications today, including our uncertainty about exactly what the family is for.

Impact #1 was the removal of most productive work from the household and family context. Work was now outside the home, often at some distance. And this in turn weakened family cohesion. It also forced discussions of the division of family roles. In Western society, many families responded by assuming that men should work outside the home, and women, at least after marriage, should not. This meant a redefinition of fatherhood, toward much less involvement with household and children. Many men in fact began to assume that they had no skills with children, because they were away so much. The standard 19^th-century definition of fatherhood emphasized breadwinner roles, supporting the family, rather than interacting with it extensively or serving as moral guide in the traditional manner. It meant also a redefinition of women’s roles, toward more stress on housework and motherhood. The percentage of women in the labor force dropped steadily in Western society, except in wartime, until the 1950s. And finally the removal of work forced a larger reconsideration of what the family was for, what marriage even was for. If the family was no longer necessary as a production unit, was it as important as before? What emotional and leisure functions could replace the production emphasis? Family advocates could answer these questions, particularly by emphasizing the family as a warm emotional unit; but the discussion was anxious and it goes on still today. It was not surprising that divorce rates rose during industrialization as part of this new uncertainty.

The second key question industrialization forced on families involved the purpose of children. In early industrialization, lots of children continued to work, as was traditional. But it soon became clear that factory work was harmful to children. Also, more advanced machinery began to reduce the routine tasks children could do. So the emphasis shifted to getting children out of work and into schools, a huge change in the definition of childhood. In the process, children shifted from being economic assets, helping to support the family, to economic liability, costing money for clothes and books. In all industrial societies the response to this was a fairly rapid reduction in the birth rate. But this raised questions too. If families were smaller, with less focus on numbers of children, how could parental success be defined? Fewer children per family made them more valuable emotionally – soon, industrial societies managed dramatically to reduce the child death rate. But children themselves might face new confusions, as childhood was much more separate from adult roles. It was harder for adults to define exactly how children served the family, and here too, we’re still arguing about this, in the family context produced by industrialization.

The issues the industrial revolution raised about work and the family were not all bad. There were advantages in shaking up established patterns. Especially in the family area, children could benefit from less work pressure, and women began to reconsider the reactions that had pulled them out of the labor force. But the pressure of change was huge. Many people, and not just the very poor, found in industrialization an immense confusion and uncontrollable intrusion into personal habits and values. We can see the exterior signs of change, for example in the awful slums of industrial cities like Glasgow. But there were internal changes too, as people found their personal values under attack, and in the long run these changes may have been the most challenging.  It was a French industrialist who put the point nicely, in talking about how change kept coming: “It might be better if progress could stop, except that it is inevitable.”

It was the sense of industrialization as a disruptive force, as well as the more direct implications of new technology, production, and wealth, that shaped how the industrial revolution affected other aspects of social and cultural life, such as art and religion. Everywhere, there was a strong impulse to put the breaks on change, to defend traditional styles and values or to invent new traditions to provide a sense of stability. But in all areas also, change in fact broke through, creating new, industrial modes of religion and culture that did alter the nature of Western civilization well beyond the economic sphere. Let’s see how this process worked in four key areas: art, religion, family imagery, and leisure. We’ll then sum up the different impacts in terms of Western identity.

Art

Before the industrial revolution, in the 18^th century, Western art was still dominated by formal classicism, which featured careful rules for presentation in painting, music and drama, and also a fairly stiff and monumental approach. By the early 19^th century a new artistic current, Romanticism, rebelled against classicism. It called for more vivid portrayals of nature, more emotion, and a casting off of the old classical rules. As we look back at key aspects of Romanticism, particularly in painting, the substantial neglect of industrial change is remarkable. Romantic nature, whether wild or cozy, was pre-industrial. Romantics liked to look back in architecture also, for example to older Gothic styles. Clearly, Romantic artists and the people who patronized their work tended to see art as an alternative to industrial reality, an escape into a different, older kind of beauty.

This was not the only artistic response to industrialization. After about 1850 leading artists began to move still further away from established rules, in poetry and music as well as painting. Some artists directly incorporated implications of industrialization. Painters, for example, gave realistic pictures over to the new technology of photography, using painting to convey more abstract messages that no longer portrayed nature with precision. Soon, full abstraction would come to dominate, in what came to be known as “modern art.” More generally still, the newness and rule-defying qualities of modern art might fit well with the industrial age, in portraying rapid change, even chaos. But artists in the main were uncomfortable with the industrial world by the late 19^th century. Some were angry at it, others were withdrawn.  They talked or art for art’s sake, because the society around them seemed strange, devoted to false values. Industrialization, then, accompanied major changes in Western art, but also a new level of discomfort. For their part, many industrialists disliked artists, seeing them as bohemian rebels against sensible values.

And popular taste did not necessarily go along with modern art. Many people, in the art they cherished in posters and magazines, continued to emphasize more Romantic-style escapism, with cozy nature scenes or warm and fuzzy family portraits, that would give them an alternative to industrial settings and a sense of recapturing a nostalgic past. They liked music that built on sweet harmonies or folk styles. Artistic responses to industrialization were significant, and Western art changed at various levels. But the importance of art probably declined, as people turned their attention to other matters and as industry and cities increasingly dominated the landscape. And the coherence of art, and the relationship between avant-garde art and popular taste, suffered as well. The nature of art in the West, and the Western-ness of art itself, changed. There was still art in the West, but a distinctively Western artistic unity became harder to define.

Religion

Western religion was already complex, of course, when the industrial revolution began. The division between Protestant faiths and Catholicism had not been resolved, and science made further inroads on religious belief. It was not surprising that industrialization’s impact on religion established still further complexity.

Like art, religion could be a solace amid the strangeness of industrialization, and so it was for many people. The 19^th century saw many revivals of piety. Methodism, a new, intense Protestant faith, spread widely among workers in Britain, and then among many American farmers. Catholicism experienced a revival of miracles, including Lourdes, in France, where three young girls saw apparitions of the Virgin Mary and where a huge devotional center ensued. Even aside from offering spiritual alternatives to the industrial world, religion could provide identity and familiar moorings amid change. Many American immigrants clung to religion in a strange land, making the United States one of the vigorous new centers of Christianity and also Judaism.

Industrial wealth also supported religion in many ways. Fancy new churches decked the growing cities. Missionary activity abroad expanded rapidly. Particularly striking was the new commitment of English and American Protestants to mission work in Asia and Africa, often with major impact on the areas involved.

But at home, in the West, religion on the whole suffered in the wake of industrialization, for two reasons. First, economic opportunities and problems might make religion seem less relevant. People spent more time enjoying new affluence, or worrying about survival in harsh cities, than they did exploring the intricacies of faith. Values became more secular. Even when groups, like the middle class, maintained religious practice, and gave money to the churches, the intensity of belief often waned. In the United States, for examples, Protestant ministers were still attacking a consumer lifestyle in the 1830s, urging simpler habits in keeping with making religion the primary focus in life. But by the 1870s, in the mainstream churches, they were embracing consumer spending, urging people to keep up with the latest fashions. With changes like this, the balance between religion and secular values had clearly shifted.

The second reason for religion’s decline focused on workers, but more in Europe than the United States. Many workers found established churches aligned with the ruling classes, and hostile to workers’ political and social concerns. Many church leaders turned against working-class political movements, including socialism.  Even the new urban churches seemed to fancy. In the United States, where church and state were separate, the churches’ conservatism was less of a problem, and religion held its own much better in the United States as a result. But in most parts of Western Europe, religious practice declined fairly rapidly, a rend that continued in the 20^th century. People began looking for new targets for belief.

The decline of religion as a force in Western society was not launched by industrialization, but certainly the industrial revolution accelerated the process. One result was clearly anomalous: the West projected a more religious face to the rest of the world, through the missionaries, than it maintained at home. Why would this odd combination make sense amid the industrial disruptions of the 19^th and 20^th centuries?

Family

Here we’re talking about an addition to Western cultures, that was very potent. We have seen that the 19^th century was a tremendously disruptive period for family life, in various respects. But it also saw the creation of a powerful, nostalgic family ideology, that was clearly meant to compensate for some of the actual changes in industrial life. Symbolically, the family became more important than before in Western culture, as a beacon of virtue and stability in a changing, materialistic world. The new family ideology was strongest in Britain and the United States, but it had wide resonance. The family ideology emanated from the middle class, but it was preached to other groups as well.

In pictures like this, the family was what one historian has called a “haven in a heartless world.” Children, if properly treated, were loving, innocent creatures. The new family ideology explicitly contradicted traditional Christian ideas of original sin, or beliefs that children should be frightened into obedience. Women, unless they were harlots, were naturally pure and tender, the true anchors of family life. Families should be pictured in loving harmony, perhaps around the piano. Holidays, once occasions for group festivities, increasingly became family affairs. Christmas also received new attention, as a family occasion, increasingly spiced by store-bought, consumer gifts. Middle-class sections of cemeteries filled with family monuments.

Here was a reaction similar to the reactions in religion and art, and related to them. It seemed vital to project a non-industrial space, that would be free from machines and competition, and the new family imagery was a powerful tool here. As with modern art, this was not a Western tradition. And this leads to an obvious question, when family culture is compared with family reality, in the 19^th century or still today: has the result been a good thing, for actual families? Did Westerners place unrealistic expectations on family, as a compensation for the roughness of the industrial world? For another effect of industrialization on the family was to increase the divorce rate throughout Western society, though with particular vigor in places like the United States.

Leisure and recreation

The industrial revolution transformed the nature of leisure in Western society, and Western influence would soon disseminate the results to the whole world. Leisure offered obvious escape from the industrial routine, but its actual unfolding was complex. Indeed, observers are still trying to figure out the values of leisure in industrial society.

Industrialization’s first impact on leisure was decisive and negative. People had to work harder in the first industrial decades. Manufacturers also attacked traditional leisure forms as wasteful and dangerous. Traditional festivals took too much time away from work, and they involved too much carousing and mass assembly. Daily leisure habits, like taking naps or singing on the job, were fought as well. A few habits were not curtailed, like working-class drinking. But in the main early industrialization scaled back leisure. The most obvious leisure response to industrialization – getting more of it and using it as an anchor of tradition – was thus made impossible.

By the later 19^th century though, a new set of leisure opportunities emerged. And even though they were not really traditional, they could provide escape. Several main settings focused industrial-style leisure, besides family-based recreations. Vacations began to emerge; by the 1880s English workers took day excursions by train to popular seaside resorts, where they played games and sat soberly on the sand, fully dressed (for chances to learn to swim had not yet developed). In the United States, amusement parks were devised. Professional sports developed, with soccer football associations in Europe, baseball in the United States, and boxing in both spots. Popular theater, called music hall in England, vaudeville in the U.S., drew middle-class as well as worker audiences, eager to hear popular songs and broad-based humor. By 1900, this tradition was moving into the new medium called movies.

This leisure assumed that many people, from various social groups, had money to spend above subsistence. It assumed that parts of each day or at least each week would be separate from work.  It also reflected a reduction in average work hours. It was based in the main on commercial companies and professional entertainers providing recreation for fairly passive audiences of spectators. Some of the leisure obviously contrasted with work, like the bawdy songs in the music halls. Escapism was widely sought.  But some of the new leisure meshed with work in unexpected ways. Modern sports stressed speed and records. Teams had specialized playing positions and rules enforced by “foremen” called referees. Though some of the games drew on popular traditions – there were forms of football as early as the Middle Ages – their precise nature was quite new, and not only because they depended on factory-produced equipment. The question, which observers continue to debate about mass industrial leisure, is whether this new leisure provided as much real engagement and satisfaction as traditional leisure had once done, and as the drawbacks of modern work seemed to require. People liked the leisure, but the verdict is still out on how meaningful it was.

The industrial revolution helped shape a rebalancing among various facets of Western culture. Religion declined and the role of art changed. Family values were newly revered, while a dramatically new type of leisure emerged. The result reflected the need for some relief from industrial life in its starkest forms, but it also reflected some real disagreements about what kinds of escape to seek. The overall balance showed a cultural life, and a role for the creators of culture, quite different from the pre-industrial Western tradition. Some would argue that the nature of Western civilization blurred in the process, particularly when some of the new forms, like spectator leisure, were quickly copied in other parts of the world. Art was substantially new; so were many family images, even though they seem traditional. So was most leisure, while Western religion declined. Was all of this still Western? Not surprisingly other parts of the world picked up many of the new themes, like modern art or sports, very quickly. Did they become Western in the process?

Industrialization and the state, war and diplomacy

In political life, similar complexity prevailed. Prior to the industrial revolution, three key political trends had defined Western civilization: First, a persistent tendency to strengthen the state and expand its functions. Second, a debate about the most appropriate organizational form for the state, against pure feudalism or pure monarchy. Third, a long tradition of emphasizing warfare and expansionism.  The French Revolution had most recently picked up both trends: it tended to expand the state’s functions, talking for example about new roles in education and a new focus on national centralization. But it also ended by attacking the monarchy, promoting the idea of representative rule, and even suggesting expansion of voting rights. Finally, it intensified national rivalries and wars and led to various efforts at gaining new territories. 

The industrial revolution participated in all these trends, but it gave them all new meanings. As in culture, it was still possible to talk about a Western state, but this was a very different animal from what had existed prior to industrialization.

By itself, the industrial revolution was an anti-democratic force, and it certainly created new concentrations of political and economic power. Factory owners steadily scaled back workers’ rights, trying to compel them to accept direction from above. Ironically, some of the clearest moves toward factory authority came in the most democratic countries, like the United States. By 1900 Americans were leading in the movement to give new power to industrial engineers to regulate workers’ motions and to defy trade union protest. Workers often struggled for greater workplace democracy, but they never, at least by the early 21^st century, got very far. But this very tension, between beliefs in human rights and widespread participation and the facts of industrial life on the job, could promote greater pressure for representation and the vote in politics.

And this helps explain why, building on earlier Western precedent, most Western countries, as they industrialized, began to create more rights for elected parliaments and gradually to expand the vote. Earlier ideals, as from the French Revolution, combined with the pressures of industrial life: people needed a political outlet and a sense that the state was on their side. Male workers gained the vote in most Western countries by the 1860s, by which time most countries had constitutions and significant parliaments as well.

The idea of protecting individual rights in speech, press and religion also spread increasingly in the West during the 19^th century. Freedom of assembly came harder, because all early industrial governments attacked worker organizations with laws and police intervention. But after 1870 greater freedom occurred here as well, though police still attacked big strikes even in the 20^th century.  But in industrial work, freedoms were cut back, as individuals were brought under strict factory rules and other requirements. Thus, while the industrial revolution was not a triumph of freedom or democracy, it did promote changes in political structure in part to balance the new constraints of work life.

The results of industrialization in terms of government functions were much clearer: the industrial revolution promoted a further expansion of the Western state. Only two governments, and briefly, scaled back in the 19^th century, Britain and Norway. Elsewhere, including in the United States, growth was the norm.

It was true that with industrialization, governments pulled back from some forms of economic regulation, as in attempts to limit technological change for example. Most governments also gradually pulled back in the religious sphere as well, allowing greater freedom from state control.

But these shifts were more than balanced by new functions such as: greater operations in assuring economic infrastructure, such as postal systems and transportation systems or portions of these systems. New responsibilities arose for public health, particularly as cities and industrial pollution tended to expand. New responsibilities arose for education, both for technical experts like engineers, and for mass education. And new responsibilities grew for regulating some industrial excesses, by inspecting factories for safety, limiting hours of work, and providing workers with some state-sponsored insurance in case of accidents or old age. Everywhere, government bureaucracies expanded and everywhere, governments devised new tax systems to make sure that part of industrial wealth came their way. Industrial transportation and communication systems made it far easier for central governments to establish routine contacts with remote parts of the country, and with ordinary citizens. Finally, industrialization everywhere increased the cost and clout of the military segment of the state. Armaments buildups began in the later 19^th century, as military advocates combined with big businessmen to promote major weapons systems. It was going to be very difficult to stop government growth in this sector. The main point is clear:  On a variety of fronts, the industrial revolution introduced a new chapter in the history of government expansion in the West, that had begun way back in the Middle Ages.

Most industrial protest also looked to a strong state. Workers might hope to win concessions directly from employers, through strikes and union action. Some early forms of socialism assumed that a better society could be introduced without government help, that government itself might be abolished in favor of voluntary action. But by the later 19^th century, most union leaders and socialists expected the government to help the working class, by more factory inspection, laws regulating hours of work, and some greater welfare benefits.

Obviously, the two political results of industrialization – the encouragement to new government forms and greater democracy, on the one hand, and government expansion, on the other – might potentially clash. An obvious kind of clash occurred in the fury of World War I. In this emergency, industrial government expanded rapidly, commanding unprecedented control over allocation of resources, through rationing and industrial planning, and even labor. Industrial printing presses churned out posters designed to manipulate public opinion, not only to support the war effort but to believe that every hesitation was subversive, that the other side in the conflict was barbaric and evil.  In Germany, late in the war, the military effectively took over government control. Here was a precedent that would show up again in the crisis of the depression, particularly again in Germany where the Nazi regime abolished effective democracy and parliament in favor of using the nation’s great industrial resources to create an unprecedented authoritarian state. Normally, Western nations have continued to try to balance an industrial-strength state with effective parliamentary democracy, but the tension has been quite real, and indeed remains quite real.

The industrial revolution had one final effect on the West, in further changing its position in the world. Here, industrialization initially accelerated a longstanding trend toward growing Western power and influence economically, of course, but also militarily and politically. The long-range implications of industrialization at the world level raise a final set of questions about what the industrial revolution and Western civilization have to do with each other.

First, economics. Industrialization made it possible for Western countries to flood world markets with cheap manufactured goods, driving out local, traditional manufacturing workers in the process. Early in the 19^th century Britain thus captured cloth markets in India and Latin America, displacing hundreds of thousands of workers who could not match the new machines. In return, the West, increased its import of foods, raw materials and some other products from other parts of the world, most of which relied on very cheap labor. Increasing numbers of countries thus became dependent on a world economy under essentially Western control. The gap in living standards between the West and the rest widened steadily, partly because the West got richer, but partly because other areas became poorer.

Steamships allowed rapid movements of weapons and troops, and also allowed the West to send gunboats upriver in places like Africa and China. Handfuls of Western troops could and did intervene in various parts of the world, defeating larger local forces.

Finally, the tensions industrialization caused in Europe also promoted new outreach in the world at large. Western countries worried about their economic competitiveness, so they sought to dominate foreign supplies and markets. Governments also hoped to distract the urban masses with policies that would demonstrate national superiority and the excitement of conquest.

In many places, like Africa and Southeast Asia, these changes were capped by outright political control. The 19^th century was the heyday of Western imperialism.

These developments had two further consequences. First, they increased the sense, outside the West, that Western civilization stood for power and intervention, and little else.

When the Indian leader Gandhi was later asked what he thought about Western civilization, he answered that he thought it would be a very good idea. To Westerners, in the age of imperialism, the West stood for democracy, humanitarianism, high art, solid family life, and not just muscle. But the rest of the world might see it differently. Differences in what Western civilization means persist to an extent even today.

But second, the sheer fact of Western dominance forced most parts of the world to consider a fair amount of imitation, in order to limit Western penetration or roll it back. Different societies responded to this challenge in different ways and at different times. China, for example, was slower than Japan. But in general, there was a growing awareness that some aspects of the West had to be copied if possible: these aspects increasingly included military technology and organization; science; at least some components of industrialization; and at least some components of the Western political system including new states functions, like education and public health, and often at least a form of parliamentary and democratic government. Many individuals in societies like Japan also wanted to copy aspects of the West such as sports (Japan was playing American baseball by the 1890s) or consumerism (Japanese department stores began to open by the 1900s, and Western-style clothing spread widely). As this process carried forward, particularly in successful industrial societies like Japan, Western ideas and institutions penetrated considerably.

This was a triumph for industrial Western society, but it also made it harder to define what was still Western about the West. The industrial revolution had reduced some aspects of what Western civilization used to involve, like intense Christianity or the classical tradition in the arts. Now, partially Westernized societies arose elsewhere, complete with industry, parliaments, and participation in modern art. What, then, did being Western mean, in the modern world? Does being Western mean more than being modern and industrial, and if a society is modern and industrial is it also Western? These questions can be answered, but they are complex and require careful comparisons. They remind us of the modern success of the West, but also the extent to which industrialization redefined what Western means.

Conclusion

To sum up: this discussion has tried to expand on what the industrial revolution was and why it was such a big deal historically. It has also tried to talk about its relation to Western civilization. The first part, the big deal part, comes through in technology and also in daily life: almost noone, in industrial societies, lives daily life the same way as his or her counterpart did 200 years ago, whether the subject is children and how many to have, or work, or recreation, of family.

The second part, concerning Western civilization, is harder. Industrialization resulted in part from some Western characteristics, but it is important not to overdo this. Certainly, many nonwestern societies have industrialized or are industrializing also. Industrialization in the West carried on some important trends, like changes in government form or the interest in science and secular values. But industrialization also changed what the West means, for example in art, or in the functions of governments.

And finally, industrialization changed the Western picture in the world. It increased Western power, at least for a century and a half, but it also made many other societies less different from the West than had been the case earlier. It is not surprising that Westerners and others have some new problems in figuring out what the West is, and what the essential features are, in a modern, industrial context.