when did the industrial revolution start

When did the industrial revolution start series#

But what they do oppose is the dubious narrative of progress caricatured above. This narrative remains today an ingrained operating principle that propels us in a seemingly unstoppable way toward more growth and more technology, because the assumption is that these things are ultimately beneficial for humanity.Īdvocates of sustainability are not opposed to industrialization per se, and don’t seek a return to the Stone Age. The proponents of the Industrial Revolution inherited from the philosophers of the Enlightenment the narrative of human (read: European) progress over time but placed technological advancement and economic liberalization at the center of their conception of progress. Narratives are inevitably moralistic they are never created spontaneously from “the facts” but are rather stories imposed upon a range of phenomena that always include implicit ideas about what’s right and what’s wrong. Those who criticize industrial society are often met with defensive snarkiness: “So you’d like us to go back to living in caves, would ya?” or “you can’t stop progress!” What if we adopt a more critical and skeptical attitude toward the values we’ve inherited from the past? To criticize industrial modernity is somehow to criticize the moral advancement of humankind, since a central theme in this narrative is the idea that industrialization revolutionized our humanity, too. It makes it difficult to dissent from the idea that new technologies, economic growth, and a consumer society are absolutely necessary.

The idea that the Industrial Revolution has made us not only more technologically advanced and materially furnished but also better for it is a powerful narrative and one that’s hard to shake. Consider, for instance, the closing lines of Joel Mokyr’s 2009 The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain, 1700–1850: “Material life in Britain and in the industrialized world that followed it is far better today than could have been imagined by the most wild-eyed optimistic 18th-century philosophe-and whereas this outcome may have been an unforeseen consequence, most economists, at least, would regard it as an undivided blessing.' The narrative has gotten more complex but remains à la base a triumphalist story. Indeed, it is deeply ingrained in the collective identity of the industrialized world. Sadly, this saccharine story still sweetens our societal self-image.

The net result has been increased human happiness, wealth, and productivity-the attainment of our true potential as a species. They did this, in part, by “opening up markets” in primitive agrarian societies. Later, around the time that Europeans decided that colonial slavery wasn’t such a good idea, they exported this revolution to other parts of the world, so that everyone could participate in freedom and industrialized modernity. Cheap and abundant fossil fuel powered the trains and other steam engines that drove humankind into this brave new future. In the end, Europeans lived in a new world based on wage labor, easy mobility, and the consumption of sparkling products.Įurope had rescued itself from the pre-industrial misery that had hampered humankind since the dawn of time. It was a long and difficult process, but this revolution eventually brought Europeans to a new plateau of civilization. By the mid-19th century, they had managed to implement a laissez-faire (“free”) economy that ran on new machines and was centered around modern factories and an urban working class.

When did the industrial revolution start series#

Fueled by the optimism and scientific know-how of the Enlightenment, a series of heroic men-James Watt, Adam Smith, William Huskisson, and so on-fought back against the stultifying effects of regulated economies, irrational laws and customs, and a traditional guild structure that quashed innovation. The story tends to go something like this: Inventors, economists, and statesmen in Western Europe dreamed up a new industrialized world.

Indeed, economic progress is cast as moral progress. The stock narrative of the Industrial Revolution is one of moral and economic progress.