The Effect of the Industrial Revolution on the Wider World

2008 Words5 Pages

The aims of this paper are to evaluate the effects the Industrial Revolution had on the wider world. This essay will be assessing the impact of technology and innovation on employment of the era, and how the factory system gave rise to socialism. In addition, it will be evaluating how the Industrial Revolution was the precursor to the phenomenon of consumerism and the resulting globalization. The Industrial Revolution was a period from 1750 to 1850 where agriculture, manufacturing, transportation, and technology went through a period of significant change. These changes had a profound impact on the social and cultural conditions of the time, beginning in the Untied Kingdom and spreading throughout Western Europe, North America, and the rest of the world. The Industrial Revolution, considered a major turning point in history, effected almost every aspect of daily life; through new discoveries in technology came new jobs; through new jobs came new working conditions; through new working conditions came new laws and new politics, the repercussions of which extend to today. As Crump emphasizes: ‘The world as we have come to know it in the twenty-first century is impossible to understand without looking at the foundations laid – mainly in the English-speaking world of the eighteenth century – in the course of what is now known, but not then, as the ‘Industrial Revolution’ . Most famously recognized as a time of great technological innovation, the Industrial Revolution gave birth too two of the most transforming technologies, which came to spur the revolution on; cotton spinning and steam power. The two technologies are closely linked, the improved Steam Engine, invented by James Watt and patented in 1755, was originally used ... ... middle of paper ... ...-1820 : Parish Apprentices and the Making of the Early Industrial Labour Force. Studies in Labour History. Aldershot, England ; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007. Horn, Jeff, Leonard N. Rosenband, and Merritt Roe Smith. Reconceptualizing the Industrial Revolution. Dibner Institute Studies in the History of Science and Technology. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2010. Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto. 1st Signic Classic print. ed. New York, NY: Signic Classic, 1998. Rosen, William. The Most Powerful Idea in the World : A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention. 1st ed. New York: Random House, 2010. Stearns, Peter N. Consumerism in World History : The Global Transformation of Desire. Themes in World History. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2006. Stevenson, Angus. Oxford Dictionary of English. 3rd ed. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010.

More about The Effect of the Industrial Revolution on the Wider World

Open Document