KPDS-2008-Autumn-04
Nov. 2, 2008 • 2 min
The French Revolution transformed the political and diplomatic landscape of Europe suddenly and dramatically. The transformation of industry came more gradually. By the 1830s or 1840s, however, writers and social thinkers in Europe were increasingly aware of unexpected and extraordinary changes in their economic world. They began to speak of an “industrial revolution,” one that seemed to parallel the revolution in politics. The term has stayed with us. The Industrial Revolution spanned the hundred years after 1780. It represented the first breakthrough from an agricultural and overwhelmingly rural economy to one characterized by large-scale manufacturing, more capital-intensive enterprises, and urbanization. It involved new sources of energy and power, faster transportation, mechanization, higher productivity, and new ways of organizing human labour. It triggered social changes with revolutionary consequences for the West and its relationship with the world. Of all these changes, perhaps the most important one was to be seen in energy. Over the space of two or three generations, a society and an economy that had traditionally drawn on water, wind, and wood for most of its energy needs came to depend on steam engines and coal. In other words, the Industrial Revolution brought the beginnings of “the fossil fuel age.”