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  • Essay / Various impacts of the 18th century Industrial Revolution

    The Industrial Revolution led to a shift from agriculture to manufacturing, from wind and water power to coal and steam, and from the countryside to the city. The Industrial Revolution in Britain began in the 1780s. Britain's leading inventors during the Industrial Revolution include James Hargreaves, Edmund Cartwright, James Watt, Henry Cort, Richard Trevithick, George Stephenson and his son. James Hargreaves invented Jenny spinning in 1768, which allowed spinners to produce more yarn. Edmund Cartwright's loom, invented in 1782, allowed the weaving of cloth to catch up with the spinning of thread. In the 1760s, James Watt invented a steam engine that could pump water from mines three times faster than other machines. Then, in 1782, James Watt invented a rotating machine capable of operating machines. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay In the 1780s, Henry Cort developed the puddling system that would achieve a better quality of iron. Richard Trevithick, in 1804, developed the first steam locomotive on an industrial railway line in Wales. George Stephenson and his son created the Stephenson rocket which was used on the first public railway line, opened in 1830. Between 1870 and 1914 the major industrial change was the replacement of iron by steel. Electricity was also evolving to the extent that it was easily transformed into heat, light, and motion. In the 1870s, the first working electric generator was brought to market. In 1910, coal-fired hydroelectric and steam power stations were introduced. Thomas Edison and Joseph Swan made it possible for cities to be powered by electricity. Thanks to electricity, Alexander Graham Bell was able to invent the telephone in 1826 and Guglielmo Marconi sent the first radio waves across the Atlantic in 1901. The industrial revolution had not only extreme economic impacts, but also social impacts. Major epidemics declined and the food supply increased thanks to the invention of new machines. Manufacturing was taking off, leading people to migrate to cities to find work, but cities were death traps. The rooms were small and overcrowded, and the sanitary conditions were so appalling that death rates exceeded birth rates. Factory workers had neither minimum wage nor job security. They worked 6 days a week, 12-hour shifts, with only 30 minutes for lunch and dinner. Children were forced to work until the passage of the Factories Act of 1833, but children over the age of nine were still allowed to work restricted hours. Because industrial production grew so rapidly, after 1870, workers' wages increased and the prices of manufactured goods decreased. On the eve of the revolutions of 1848, Marxism became known with the publication of the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. This short treatise essentially asserts that the history of previous societies is in reality the history of class struggles. The main political party born from this belief was the German Social Democratic Party. It originated in 1875 and when it won the 1912 Reichstag elections, it became the largest party in Germany. Marxist parties were divided between revisionism, which believed in violent revolutions, and revolutionary socialism, which believedto mass political parties. In September 1814, the Great Powers – Great Britain, Austria, Prussia and Russia – met in Vienna to reach a peace agreement after a decade of war with Napoleon. The leader, Prince Klemens von Metternich, believed in the restoration of monarchs and supported conservative ideology. After 1815, conservative forces dominated. Later, liberalism emerged, and he believed that people should be as free as possible from constraints. Liberalism was embraced by middle-class men. Nationalism was more powerful and was about the unity of a nation. Nationalism also created a unified army that could be used against other countries. The Crimean War took place on March 28, 1854, and Britain and France attacked Russia after invading the Ottoman provinces. The Crimean War was poorly planned and fought, which is why the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1856. Austria became an enemy of Russia because it did not support Russia in the war and because it has remained neutral, it no longer has any friends among the great powers. The Triple Alliance of 1882 brought together Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy. The Triple Alliance was engaged in an alliance against France. Bismarck maintained a separate treaty with Russia. When Emperor Wilhelm II took over German foreign policy and concluded treaties with the two opposing countries, he terminated the treaty with Russia. This led to the creation of the Triple Entente in 1907, consisting of Britain, Russia and France. The two groups led to conflict in the Balkans between 1908 and 1913, which sparked World War I. Simon Bolivar and José de San Martin became leaders of the independence movement in Latin America. Napoleon Bonaparte weakened the Spanish and Portuguese empires and, in doing so, led to a series of revolts. The first revolt was a slave rebellion led by Toussaint L'ouverture and gave Haiti its freedom in 1804. In 1810, Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, a priest from Mexico, attempted to gain freedom for Mexico but ultimately failed. failed due to planning. However, Mexico still celebrates September 16 as Mexican Independence Day. Bolivar was considered the liberator of Venezuela in 1813, although he did not defeat Spanish forces until 1821. San Martin was determined to rid Latin America of Spanish control and surprised them at the Battle of Chacabuco on February 12, 1817. San Martin then went to liberate Peru and asked Bolivar for help but was disappointed. Bolivar crushed the last Spanish troops at Ayacucho on December 9, 1824. Central America was free in 1823 and divided into five republics between 1838 and 1839. President James Monroe issued the Monroe Doctrine in 1823 to guarantee the independence of the new nations from Latin America. John Marshall served as chief justice of the Supreme Court from 1801 to 1835 and was known for allowing the court to overturn an act of Congress if it violated the Constitution. The United States banned the importation of slaves in 1808. President Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860 and made it clear that the United States could not be half slave and half free. In February 1861, seven Southern states voted to repeal ratification of the U.S. Constitution. This led to the formation of the Confederate States of America. On January 1, 1863, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation which set slaves free. The Confederate cause was defeated on April 9, 1865, by General Ulysses S. Grant, forcing General Robert E. Lee to surrender. The 13th Amendment abolished slavery in 1865 and the 14th and 15th granted blacks citizenship and the rightvoting for black men. The British took control of Canada in 1763 under the Treaty of Paris. Canadians wanted self-government, so rebellions broke out in 1837 against British authority. In 1867, Canada had its first parliament with its own constitution. To resolve issues of national unity, Prime Minister John Macdonald pushed for the construction of a transcontinental railway. The work was completed in 1885. Despite the new employment opportunities, wages were low and employment unstable, so lower-class women had to turn to prostitution to survive. For most of the century, marriage was considered the only honorable career a woman could have. In 1882, Europe's first birth control clinic opened in Amsterdam. Girls from working families were expected to work until they were at least married. Until 1870 in Great Britain, 1900 in Germany and 1907 in France, women had the right to own property. Clara Barton and Florence Nightingale transformed nursing into a profession for women only. Women did not have the right to vote until 1914, except in Norway and some American states. The first women's colleges actually trained teachers. Romanticism challenged the ideas of the Enlightenment. Walter Scott's novels were European bestsellers. The Romantics gave birth to Gothic literature. Famous authors who fall into this category include Mary Shelley, who wrote Frankenstein, and Edgar Allen Poe, who wrote horror short stories. The Romantics viewed poetry as a direct expression of the soul. William Wordsworth was known for expressing his love of nature in his poetry. Casper David Friedrich painted landscapes expressing his concern for God and nature. Realism was first used to describe a style of painting in 1850, but quickly spread to literature as well. The realists of the mid-19th century rejected the ideas of romanticism. They avoided emotional language and dealt with more realistic characters. Gustave Flaubert was one of the leading novelists of the 1850s and 1860s. His most famous work was Madame Bovary in 1857, which dealt with life in France. Gustave Courbet was a famous realist painter who depicted workers. His most famous work was Les Casseurs de pierre in 1849, which depicted two men building a road. Modernism emerged after 1914 and artists rebelled against the traditional styles that once dominated Europe. The Symbolists were a group of writers who believed that the external world was simply made up of symbols reflecting an individual's reality. Impressionism was a movement in France where artists chose the countryside to paint rather than studios. Berthe Morisot was an important impressionist painter who wished that men would treat women as equals. Vincent Van Gogh was the famous post-impressionist painter who viewed art as a spiritual experience. Pablo Picasso is another famous modern artist who developed the new style called Cubism. Abstract painting began in 1910. Vasily Kandinsky was one of the founders of abstract painting and believed that art should speak to the soul. The Industrial Revolution sparked new interest in scientific research. Louis Pasteur discovered germ theory which was used to develop modern medical practices. Dmitri Mendeleev classified all material elements known at the time in the 1860s. In 1859, Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species by Means ofnatural selection. The ideas in the book evolved from organic evolution and created a process called natural selection. In 1905, Einstein published his theory of relativity, which states that space and time are relative to the observer. Sigmund Freud believed that human behavior was determined by unconscious past experiences and internal forces of which people are not aware. He published these major ideas in 1900 in The Interpretation of Dreams. Freud also developed psychoanalysis to trace repression back to its origins. The relationship between Western, Asian and African societies is called the new imperialism. It was the Industrial Revolution that started this phenomenon, but another factor was that when consumer demand lagged, an economic depression threatened. Jules Ferry, in 1885, warned against the relationship between colonialism and nationalism. Economic wealth, national status and political power went hand in hand. So by 1900, almost all of Africa and Asia were either under colonial control or on the verge of collapse. Colonialism was run under indirect or direct rule. Indirect rule involved cooperation with local elites who could be easily convinced. Direct rule involved the removal of all local elites and their replacement with their own officials. Countries could choose to assimilate or partner with local populations. Colonial rule had both positive and negative aspects. For example, the British started an education system in India, which taught both boys and girls. In 1875, a medical school in Madras accepted the first female student. The British also banned sati, allowed widows to remarry, and attempted to end the thug epidemic. They introduced the Indians to modern inventions. However, the introduction of British textiles put thousands of people out of work and damaged the local textile industry. Southeast Asia was under colonial rule in 1900. The French had captured Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, which then created the Indochinese Union under French rule. Thailand was the only nation not under colonial rule. King Mongkut and his son, King Chulalongkorn, succeeded in establishing Thailand as an independent buffer zone in 1896 by cultivating relations with major powers and introducing Western learning. The United States took control of Manila Bay in 1898 and ended resistance in 1901. Indirect governance was a better method for the Europeans because it was less costly and corrosive to the local population. The colonists focused on exporting cheap raw materials for their economic gain. Many people worked on the farms for poverty wages, in conditions so inhumane that many died. The high taxes imposed on the peasants were a heavy burden. Colonial rule led to the beginnings of modern economic infrastructure. The Dutch ended the slave trade in 1795 and the Danes stopped it in 1803. Then, in 1808, Britain and the United States made it illegal. After lobbying, many countries stopped the trade in 1815, after the Napoleonic Wars. At the beginning of the 19th century, the British created agricultural plantations for freed slaves. Many Europeans wanted a permanent presence in Africa, but most African states were able to remain independent. The same movement of European invasion occurred on the Nile. In 1798, Napoleon invaded Egypt unsuccessfully because the British were.