Week+6+-+How+industrialisation+changed+human+lives+and+destinies

With the Age of Enlightenment prompting significant social advances, 1. another giant wheel was set in motion from the middle of the 18th century, beginning in the United Kingdom. One that would rapidly spread, influencing life in some way, for almost every living thing. This was the Industrial Revolution, and over an intense period of initial implementation lasting approximately one hundred years, it triggered a massive shift away from the labors of agriculture as the key focus of human endeavour, to fervoured excitement over an invention that surpassed the output of a thousand men: the machine.

Ignited by self interest and an entrepreneurial spirit,2.fuelled by coal and powered by steam, machines could manufacture identical items in rapid succession, allowing mass production around the clock and unprecedented economic opportunity, as roads, steamships and railways connected the world. It would change human lives and destinies forever:

**Employment** - People moved from the fields to the assembly line, to coal mines, cotton mills, operating coal powered steam engines, working in foundries, **Economics** - mass production greatly reduced the cost of items. **Population** - migration and explosion - people moved away from farms to industrial centres, more of everything could support a bigger population - so it took off: European population jumped from about 100 million in 1700 to 400 million, just 200 years later. Mass urbanisation is another facet of this exponential growth.3. **Societal views -** Descartes correctly envisioned a fusion between science and technology, where human beings would dominate nature, and in a sense he was right. Though nature is now pushing back, his thinking evolved into Newton’s view of a mastery of the natural world as a basis of our ongoing economic model, where reason and efficiency replace religion as the basis of thought.4. **Energy** - Though horse and water power continued to play a key role right up to the early 1900’s, there was also a dramatic shift away from wood to coal (much of the firewood supplies of Europe had been burnt by this stage) - powering the revolutionary steam engines at first, and later supplying electricity.5. **Crude oil** - a second, even more energy-dense source of fossil fuel was introduced in the mid 1800’s. It powered internal combustion engines more efficiently than coal powered the steam engine, to become the dominant energy source, later supported by natural gas. These fossil fuels continue to dominate the world’s economy today.4. **Chemical production on a large scale** - in turn facilitated many other inventions, which assisted the production of glass, paper, soap, rust removal and the bleaching of cloth. Innovations leading to large scale cement manufacture for instance, enabled 670,000 cubic metres to be made for the construction of the London sewerage system in the late 19th century. Chemicals were also developed to assist agricultural practices with fertilisers dramatically increasing crop yields and pesticides eliminating many natural challenges to food sources.6. **Electricity** - the ability to transfer mechanical energy into electricity further revolutionised life for humanity by the end of the 19th century. **Transport** - goods and people filled with ideas could move around as never before, by road, canal, waterway and rail. Ease of transport opened opportunities for trade and sourcing distant materials - as regions began to specialise in certain goods - Belgium for its coal and steel and Germany for the manufacture of chemicals, for instance.7. **The spread of knowledge** - ideas and innovation were observed, noted, analysed, copied - and improved, as people travelled across the world to learn and pass on what was being discovered. **Market economy -** Moving into the 1800’s, this increasingly became the driving force of the world’s finances, driven by production and distribution of goods. Society began to shape itself around this force - many would argue, become enslaved to it, as profit became the most important measure of worth and success. **Gas lighting** - allowed factories and stores to remain open and working, and city streets to be lit much more brightly than possible with dimmer predecessors. City street lighting in turn contributed to a surge in nightlife. **Metals** - Coal-powered heat allowed the manufacture of pure metals including lead, copper, iron and the strongest of all - steel **Weapons** - military production contributed to the development of machine tools, guns and other weaponry, rapidly increasing military firepower **New glass making techniques** produced larger panes and more of them - a move that helped redefine architecture. **Continuous papermaking** - large sheets equalled large-scale manufacture for stationery, currency, newspapers and books. The latter contributed to a significant rise in literacy and political participation.8. **Child labour -** Cheap, easily controlled, less likely to complain and ultimately expendable, children formed a significant part of the workforce during the industrial revolution. Child labour laws were implemented with little effect (the problem continues to this day, particularly in many third world countries).9. **The rise of the trade union movement** - With working conditions so appalling for lower class peoples of the era, unions formed to defend worker rights through action like strikes. This influence fed upwards into the development of socialist political parties. **Decline of handcrafts** - As faster, cheaper and more consistent mechanisation took hold, skilled workers formerly valued for their weaving, (etc etc) found themselves without demand - and without jobs. Luddites were a conscious, outspoken push back against this move. A collective of textile artisans, they smashed and burned many of the timber looms used to weave cotton and wool, before being bested by the British Army.10. **Health implications** - Despite horrific working conditions for small children, industrialisation actually lead to an increase in their life expectancy.11. The stench of raw sewerage and repeated outbreaks of cholera and typhoid, were eventually replaced by sewerage systems. However a new profusion of pollution saw London almost permanently afflicted with pea soup smogs (a combination of smoke and fog). In one week in 1873, smog killed over 700 Londoners. In 1952 however, the Great London Smog killed about 4,000.5. Water pollution also grew, spurred by a dramatic increase in industrial and human waste. The incidence of tuberculosis reached pandemic proportions in European and North American cities - with between 70-90% of city residents infected during the late 1800’s.11,12. **Environmental effects** - Burning fossil fuels to generate energy has become one of the defining problems of present day humanity. As demand grew exponentially alongside population growth, human hunger for energy has contributed to acidification of our oceans, degradation of land, polluting of our atmosphere, significant loss of biodiversity and increasingly volatile conditions of climate. Adding behaviours such as the manufacture and release of chemicals into our atmosphere and waterways, and we are witnessing damage to our environment on a dramatic scale. On the whole, human beings have thus far failed to address and correct these growing problems, which ultimately cannot be ignored.

For while it is often viewed that the Industrial Revolution changed the course of human history for the better, it is also true that humans of the mid seventeenth century had no concept that the usefulness and creativity of their innovations and technologies would equally produce some of the most destructive and challenging problems our species would face. Multiplying and snowballing for a little over 200 years, these problems and the innovation of solutions to adequately address them, has become the inheritance of 21st century humanity.

**REFERENCES**

1. Wikipedia, //Age of Enlightenment//, accessed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment 2. Wikipedia, //Industrial Revolution: Causes//, accessed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution#Causes 3. Wikipedia, //Industrial Revolution: Population Increase//, accessed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution#Population_increase 4. Takacs-Santa, Section 6//,// // [|The Major Transitions in the History of the Human Transformation of the Biosphere,] // 2004, accessed at http://www.humanecologyreview.org/pastissues/her111/111takacssanta.pdf 5. Environmental History Resources accessed at http://www.eh-resources.org/timeline/timeline_industrial.html 6. Wikipedia, //London Sewerage System//, accessed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_sewerage_system 7. Wikipedia, //Industrial Revolution: Demographic Effects//, accessed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution#Demographic_effects 8. Wikipedia, //Paper Machine//, accessed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_machine 9. Wikipedia, //Industrial Revolution: Child Labour//, accessed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution#Child_labour 10. Wikipedia, //Luddite//, accessed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite 11. Wikipedia, //Industrial Revolution: Other Effects//, accessed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution#Other_effects 12. History Learning Site accessed at istory Lhttp://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/diseases_industrial_revolution.htm