AP European History
AP European History
As industrialization spread across Europe, society changed in many ways. The interaction among the Enclosure Movement, the Agricultural Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution led to a tremendous population increase. Along with this came a growth of cities, as factories drew thousands of workers. Rapidly growing cities, such as Manchester, England, could not keep up with the demand for housing and infrastructure, including roads, sewage disposal, and police. With the overcrowding of workers came those who took advantage of them through a wide variety of crimes. Thus, these squalid living conditions led many reformers to push for public health improvements and public safety.
City life was substantially different from rural life. The old class of tradesmen that had flourished under the guild system no longer had the power it once held. As factories hired more and more workers, the importance of artisans diminished. Factory workers performed monotonous, repetitious, sometimes dangerous tasks. Women and children were employed in mines, as well as factories – indeed, prior to the Factory Act of 1833, women and children made up the majority of workers in British textile factories. This was a far cry from the old system of families working side by side on farms or in cottage industries.
Factory workers often went home to packed, unsanitary tenements. Soot from the factories blackened the buildings and tilled the air. Diseases such as typhoid and cholera swept through crowded cities, killing thousands. Those who survived were generally less healthy than those who worked in the countryside.
Social history is an important thread through all of European history. Be prepared to discuss the impact of the Industrial Revolution on society as a part of a continuum of how major social issues reflect their eras.
New ideologies competed with old ways of thinking about the problems of industrialization and what to do about them. Liberals tended to support the extension of the right to vote to factory owners and called for the right to run factories without government interference. Radicals in Great Britain, called republicans on the Continent, demanded universal male suffrage. Some argued that equal rights should be extended to women as well.
Throughout the nineteenth century, many people stepped forward to help workers. Fighting poor working conditions and technological unemployment (the loss of a job because a machine could perform the task), trade unions formed to protect both the quality of goods produced and the lives of the workers who produced them. Luddites, a group of skilled craftsmen, directly attacked and disabled the machines that brought factory workers not only unemployment but also boring, dangerous working conditions. The British Parliament passed several acts, including the Factory Acts of 1833 and 1847, that lowered the number of working hours allowed and raised the minimum working age. It also directly addressed the lives of working children, not only cutting the number of hours children could work but also requiring education for them. The Mines Act of 1842 took women and children out of the underground mining operations, although they still worked above ground.
Individuals and groups also tried to improve the lives of workers. Edwin Chadwick’s three-year investigation into the living conditions of the working classes was published as the Report on the Condition of the Labouring Population of Great Britain (1842). It was the basis for his recommendation for building an adequate sewage system. London: A Pilgrimage (1872) brought together 180 engravings by Gustave Doré, a French artist. Many disliked the book because so many of the compelling images showed the grim world of the urban poor. Help for workers came in a different form with the Chartist movement, begun in 1838. Its goal was to help workers in their lives outside the factories. To that end, it pushed for universal male suffrage and the removal of property qualifications for members of Parliament as a way to provide social and economic improvements in Britain.
As factories ran more efficiently – often around the clock – there was greater demand for raw materials and a wider mass market. Responding to the accelerated demand, European nations were engaged in a fierce competition for colonies, especially in Africa and Asia, by the end of the nineteenth century. At the same time, a new philosophy developed: socialism. It offered a variety of ideas for building a new society able to deal with the problems of industrialization.
Don’t think about just one class of people when you are studying for the exam. It is equally important to look at the impact of the industrial revolution on the wealthy elites as it is to concentrate on the poor working class. Factory owners could become enormously wealthy, rivaling and often surpassing the nobles, buying up land and building lavish homes in the country. They filled their city homes and country estates with the products they made and with things imported from all over the world. They had time for leisure activities and relationships within the family changed. However, if they did not run their businesses ruthlessly, they could go bankrupt and lose everything.