The Industrial Revolution

Paper Summary:

This paper evaluates in depth the effects of the Industrial Revolution in Britain, America, Japan, as well as other Continental European and Scandinavian countries. In particular, it discusses the effects of increased poverty and health risks due to a drive for capitalist profits in many of these developed countries as well as the cultural and class divisions that arose.

From the Paper:

"The process of industrialization was one of major restructuring of the World System. In American and European countries, Industrialization was accompanied by changes in values, beliefs and attitudes that were also interlocked with changing social, economic and political conditions. According to H. Heaton (in "The Causes of The Industrial Revolution in England: Debates in Economic History" by R. M Hartwell, (Peter Mathias Edition), 1967, chapter 2, p 31) "Industrial Revolution is the name given to those economic and technological developments which gathering strength and speed during the eighteenth century produced modern industrialism". As developed countries industrialized from pre-industrial and Agrarian societies, particularly in Britain and most of Europe, there was a growing drive for capitalist profits as the development of industries, commerce, technology and ideas of landed aristocracies (as in England) bred a greed for mass accumulation of wealth and the spread of political and economic monopolies. Arnold Toynbee (in "Lectures on the Industrial Revolution in England" 1884, pp 1-69) noted that Industrialization created contradictory tendencies where conflicts about social conditions were high in the face of so-called rising economic growth. He noted that wide spread pauperism arose in many European countries. There was also, notably, a highly disgruntled public in many areas such as France and in some of the Scandinavian countries such as Austria and Scotland. Indeed, these were some of the social conditions that accompanied the Industrial Revolution from the mid 1870s, along with rising crime levels, as in Britain for example."

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