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Mary Shelley's |
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GEOGRAPHY HISTORICAL INFO LITERARY TERMS
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Industrial Revolution in Europe 1750-1914: Social Class and Economy New Era. In 1750 the British Isles and the European continent were on the verge of enormous change. Innovations in farming would increase the food supply; more children would survive childhood; the population would grow dramatically; machines would change where and how people worked; and canals, improved roads, and railroads would move people, food, and manufactured goods with unprecedented speed and ease. Factories would be built; cities would grow; and new economic classes would appear. All of these changes began in England, but they spread to the Continent, and by 1914 the economic development of western Europe was generally uniform. Eastern Europe lagged behind, but it too was industrializing by the eve of World War I (1914- 1918). Of course, change is always easier to see in retrospect than it is in advance, and no one knew in 1750 that the world as they knew it would not last much longer.
Agricultural Groups And Classes The Aristocracy. The aristocracy (or nobility) occupied the apex of the social hierarchy in preindustrial and industrializing Europe. It was the privileged class. Nobles had considerable economic and political power; in many places they paid no taxes. They considered themselves superior to other people by blood (noble status was inherited) and by training and education. While the nobility is sometimes referred to as a class, it is more accurate to speak of the nobles as constituting a rank or an order. Class terminology came into use later. The other traditional orders were the clergy and the commoners. In France these groups were referred to as estates. The clergy were members of the first estate, and the nobility constituted the second estate. High-church officials were the younger sons of the nobility, which means these two groups largely overlapped. Everyone else, regardless of occupation or wealth, was a member of the third estate......
Industry: Economic Transformations Factories. Before the Industrial Revolution, people worked at home or in small workshops. Factories as concentrated sites of production where multiple tasks were performed under one roof were rare. The increasingly widespread appearance of factories was a clear sign that the process of manufacturing was changing. Indeed, they became a fundamental image in the European artist's eye, appearing on canvasses with regularity. French Impressionists in the 1870s and 1880s often included them as a matter of course in their landscapes.
Responses To Industrialization: Informal And Violent Confrontation Unemployment. To many Europeans of the late eighteenth century, industrialization appeared neither inevitable nor desirable. Cottage workers and artisans were especially concerned about its effect on their employment. Small spinning jennies that could be set up in people's homes increased a spinner's productivity without throwing other people out of work, but larger jennies, Arkwright's water frame, and Crompton's mule did more than increase productivity. They moved workers into factories and threw hand spinners out of work. Unemployment likewise resulted for shearmen, who hand cut the nap from woolen cloth, when a shearing machine was invented; for weavers, when mechanical looms began to spread; and for stocking knitters, when a new flat knitting frame was invented.
Want to know more about the Industrial Revolution? The European Enlightenment: The Industrial Revolution The British Industrial Revolution What impact might industrialization had on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein? Check this out. Frankenstein and Mary Shelley's "Wet Ungenial Summer"
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