Industry

BASF-chemical factories in Ludwigshafen, Germany, 1881

Although continental nations sought to borrow from and in some instances imitate the British model—the success of which was represented by the Crystal Palace Exhibition in 1851 -- each nation’s experience of industrialization was shaped by its own matrix of geographic, social, and political factors.

Industry,

c. 1815-1914 CE

The transition from an agricultural to an industrial economy began in Britain in the 18th century, spread to France and Germany between 1850 and 1870, and finally spread to Russia in the 1890s. The governments of those countries actively supported industrialization. In southern and eastern Europe, some pockets of industry developed, surrounded by traditional agrarian economies.

Although continental nations sought to borrow from and in some instances imitate the British model—the success of which was represented by the Crystal Palace Exhibition in 1851—each nation’s experience of industrialization was shaped by its own matrix of geographic, social, and political factors. The legacy of the revolution in France, for example, led to a more gradual adoption of mechanization in production, ensuring a more incremental industrialization than was the case in Britain. Despite the creation of a customs union in the 1830s, Germany’s lack of political unity hindered its industrial development. However, following unification in 1871, the German Empire quickly came to challenge British dominance in key industries, such as steel, coal, and chemicals.

Beginning in the 1870s, the European economy fluctuated widely because of the vagaries of financial markets. Continental states responded by assisting and protecting the development of national industry in a variety of ways, the most important being protective tariffs, military procurements, and colonial conquests. Key economic stakeholders, such as corporations and industrialists, looked to national governments to promote economic development by subsidizing ports, transportation, and new inventions; registering patents and sponsoring education; encouraging investments and enforcing contracts; and maintaining order and preventing labor strikes. In the 20th century, some national governments assumed far-reaching control over their respective economies, largely in order to contend with the challenges of war and financial crises.

Source: https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/pdf/ap-european-history-course-and-exam-description.pdf

Overall, although inequality and poverty remained significant social problems, the quality of material life improved. For most social groups, the standard of living rose, the availability of consumer products grew, and sanitary standards, medical care, and life expectancy improved.

Industrialization promoted the development of new socioeconomic classes between 1815 and 1914. In highly industrialized areas, such as western and northern Europe, the new economy created new social divisions, leading for the first time to the development of self-conscious economic classes, especially the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. In addition, economic changes led to the rise of trade and industrial unions, benevolent associations, sport clubs, and distinctive class-based cultures of dress, speech, values, and customs.

Europe also experienced rapid population growth and urbanization that resulted in benefits as well as social dislocations. The increased population created an enlarged labor force, but in some areas migration from the countryside to the towns and cities led to overcrowding and significant emigration overseas. Industrialization and urbanization changed the structure and relations of bourgeois and working-class families to varying degrees.

Birth control became increasingly common across Europe, and childhood experience changed with the advent of protective legislation, universal schooling, and smaller families. The growth of a cult of domesticity established new models of gendered behavior for men and women. Gender roles became more clearly defined as middle-class women withdrew from the workforce. At the same time, working-class women increased their participation as wage laborers, although the middle class criticized them for neglecting their families.

Industrialization and urbanization also changed people’s conception of time; in particular, work and leisure were increasingly differentiated by means of the imposition of strict work schedules and the separation of the workplace from the home. Increasingly, trade unions charged themselves as the protectors of workers and working-class families, lobbying for improved working conditions and old-age pensions. Increasing leisure time spurred the development of leisure activities and spaces for bourgeois families. Overall, although inequality and poverty remained significant social problems, the quality of material life improved. For most social groups, the standard of living rose, the availability of consumer products grew, and sanitary standards, medical care, and life expectancy improved.

Source: https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/pdf/ap-european-history-course-and-exam-description.pdf

Industrialization

Objective: Explain the factors that influenced the development of industrialization in Europe from 1815 to 1914.

British

View from Kersal Moor towards Manchester by Thomas Pether, circa 1820, then still a rural landscape.

Manchester from Kersal Moor, by William Wyld in 1857, a view now dominated by chimney stacks as a consequence of the Industrial Revolution.

Britain’s ready supplies of coal, iron ore, and other essential raw materials promoted industrial growth.
Mechanization and the factory system became the predominant modes of production by 1914.
Great Britain established its industrial dominance through the mechanization of textile production, iron and steel production, and new transportation systems in conjunction with uniquely favorable political and social climates.
Economic institutions and human capital such as engineers, inventors, and capitalists helped Britain lead the process of industrialization, largely through private initiative.
Britain’s parliamentary government promoted commercial and industrial interests because those interests were represented in Parliament.

George Stephenson's Rocket amazed onlookers when it sped along the Liverpool and Manchester Railway at 16 miles per hour in 1829.

SS Great Western, the first steam-powered ocean-going ship, was the world's largest passenger ship when it first crossed the Atlantic in 1838.

The first World's Fair, the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations held at the Crystal Palace, London in 1851, housed 14,000 displays of industrial equipment from 25 countries.

Continental

Early industrialised region at Barmen in the Wupper Valley, 1870 - painting by August von Wille.

Dortmund-Ems Canal, Germany, 1912

France moved toward industrialization at a more gradual pace than Great Britain, with government support and with less dislocation of traditional methods of production.
A combination of factors, including geography, lack of resources, the dominance of traditional landed elites, the persistence of serfdom in some areas, and inadequate government sponsorship, accounted for eastern and southern Europe’s lag in industrial development.
Because of the continued existence of more primitive agricultural practices and land-owning patterns, some areas of Europe lagged in industrialization while facing famine, debt, and land shortages.
Industrialization in Prussia allowed that state to become the leader of a unified Germany, which subsequently underwent rapid industrialization under government sponsorship.

Industrialization

The Second Industrial Revolution

Objective: Explain how innovations and advances in technology during the Industrial Revolutions led to economic and social change.

The Eiffel Tower was constructed for the Exposition Universelle world's fair of 1889.

Rapid technological developments around the turn of the 20th century sped travel and communication drawing the world closer together.

The luxurious Orient Express route opened in 1883. Passengers could travel from Paris to Istanbul by a combination of train and ferry in 80 hours.

New technologies and means of communication and transportation—including railroads— resulted in more fully integrated national economies, a higher level of urbanization, and a truly global economic network.
New, efficient methods of transportation and other innovations created new industries, improved the distribution of goods, increased consumerism, and enhanced quality of life.
During the second industrial revolution (c. 1870–1914), more areas of Europe experienced industrial activity, and industrial processes increased in scale and complexity.

global steamship routes, c. 1920

19th Century Capitalism

Objective: Explain how industrialization influenced economic and political development throughout the period from 1815 to 1914.

traffic on the River Thames, London

Volatile business cycles in the last quarter of the 19th century led corporations and governments to try to manage the market through a variety of methods, including monopolies, banking practices, and tariffs.

The Second Industrial Revolution and 19th Century Capitalism

Urbanization

Objective: Explain the causes and consequences of social developments resulting from industrialization.

Urban Growth

Manchester, England, c. 1844

Maps of London in 1806 and 1900. London experienced tremendous growth during the 19th century.

Along with better harvests caused in part by the commercialization of agriculture, industrialization promoted population growth, longer life expectancy, and lowered infant mortality.
With migration from rural to urban areas in industrialized regions, cities experienced overcrowding, while affected rural areas suffered declines in available labor as well as weakened communities.

Charles Marville photographed old Paris before Georges Haussmann's extensive renovations during the reign of Napoleon III.

Haussmann demolished old slums and replaced jumbled, narrow medieval streets with long, straight avenues lined with posh buildings.

Starvation and Emigration

Around 1 million people died and another 1 million emigrated during the Irish Potato Famine.

posters advertising free or cheap land in North America

Swedish emigrants board a ship bound for America. Roughly 20% of Sweden's male population and 15% of its female population moved away during the latter part of the 19th century.

European immigrants to the United States at Ellis Island, c. 1900

Urban Growth, Starvation, and Emigration

Victorian Society

Objective: Explain the causes and consequences of social developments resulting from industrialization.

In some of the less industrialized areas of Europe, the dominance of agricultural elites continued into the 20th century.
In industrialized areas of Europe (i.e., western and northern Europe), socioeconomic changes created divisions of labor that led to the development of self-conscious classes, including the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.
Bourgeois families became focused on the nuclear family and the cult of domesticity, with distinct gender roles for men and women.
Class identity developed and was reinforced through participation in philanthropic, political, and social associations among the middle classes, and in mutual aid societies and trade unions among the working classes.
Economic motivations for marriage, while still important for all classes, diminished as the middle-class notion of companionate marriage began to be adopted by the working classes.

Portrait of the 9th Duke of Marlborough with his family, John Singer Sargent (1905)

ARISTOCRACY

The fictional Crawley family from Downton Abbey faces many of the challenges to tradition that the landed aristocracy confronted by the early 20th century.

MIDDLE CLASS

Mary Poppins' Banks family is a typical Victorian/Edwardian era middle class family.

'Street Urchins', Paul Martin (1893) - Life sucked for the Victorian poor.

WORKING CLASS

Victorian Society

La Belle Époque

Objective: Explain how innovations and advances in technology during the Industrial Revolutions led to economic and social change.

Paris during La Belle Époque

Conspicuous Consumption

A heightened consumerism developed as a result of the second industrial revolution.
Industrialization and mass marketing increased both the production and demand for a new range of consumer goods— including clothing, processed foods, and labor-saving devices—and created more leisure opportunities.
By the end of the century, higher wages, laws restricting the labor of children and women, social welfare programs, improved diet, and increased access to birth control affected the quality of life for the working class.
Leisure time centered increasingly on the family or small groups, concurrent with the development of activities and spaces to use that time.

French postcards from 1899 imagining life in the year 2000.