HIST363: Global Perspectives on Industrialization

Industrialization not only changed the way societies produced goods. It also transformed the way people lived, turning rural towns into urban manufacturing centers. Newly industrialized societies faced health problems and challenges to conventional family and social structures. It also helped intensify the urbanization of European society, as more factories and industrial production moved from the countryside and city periphery into the urban centers. Factory owners preferred this centralization since it promoted social control of the working classes, who may have had more independence if they had lived further from their workplaces.

Politics in industrialized societies were transformed as traditional landed elites gave way to industrial capitalists and the burgeoning "middle class" of businessmen and professionals. Successful working-class entrepreneurs and small business people emerged as an expanding urban middle class. These individuals were not part of the traditional aristocracy or the peasant or working classes but created a new middle-class culture. Workers also began to challenge traditional political systems, drawing on new ideologies to suggest alternatives to the developing capitalist-industrial world in which they lived.

This unit will survey the sweeping changes that industrialization brought to Europe and the rest of the world between the late 18th and mid-19th centuries. We will then examine how working- and middle-class individuals and organizations used these changes to challenge traditional elites.

Completing this unit should take you approximately 11 hours.