Consequences of industrialisation

Revolution. The word is mostly used for when society changes rapidly and perhaps even violently. But a revolution can also be slow and peaceful. What all revolutions do have in common is that they change society fundamentally. As is the case with the industrial revolution.

Unlike other revolutions, such as the French Revolution, it’s hard to say exactly when the industrial revolution begins and ends. Has it even ended? Every year, new inventions appear, perhaps a better mobile phone, a smarter TV, or robots that can cut grass, or do cancer surgery. We are still in the industrial revolution, and probably will be for a long time. The industrial revolution begins with new developments that make agriculture more efficient.

But thousands of farmers become unemployed, and have to move from a country-based to a city-based life. This process is called urbanization. In the cities they start working in factories. A whole new social class emerges - the working class. The workers live a hard life.

At first, there are no laws about how long they can work. The days are long, often in dangerous environments. There are no limits on what factory owners can demand. During the 19th century, the working class begins to organize itself. The labour movement emerges, and the workers form trade unions to put limits on what can be demanded of them.

It gets better for the workers. Laws about working hours, minimum wages, and the right to retire at a certain age are brought in. The ideas of the labour movement grow over time into a theory of how society should be organized: a political ideology. The ideology of the labour movement is called socialism. Socialism will later split into several different political movements, of which the two most well known are communism and social democracy.

Women who work in the factories are even worse off than men. Women have lower wages. They also find it difficult to actually get paid, because they aren’t allowed to earn or own money. They are not recognised as citizens. Wages are therefore paid to a woman's husband or to her nearest male relative, if she is unmarried.

It’s all too easy for the men to just keep the money. Some women never get to see the wages for the work they do. Their position is not secure. During the 19th century, women therefore begin to organize themselves. Women demand that they get the same rights as men, because they have the same intellectual ability.

And now, the women's movement starts. Out of this develops feminism. Feminism later will expand, until today it is an important political ideology. Industries use large amounts of fossil fuels, for example coal and oil, to be able to produce various goods. Burning coal and oil produces pollution.

Not only that, methods of obtaining coal and oil are often very harmful to the environment and nature. When agriculture gets more efficient, food production increases. More food, together with the development of new and better medicines, leads to rapid increase in the number of people in the world. There’s a population explosion. Industrialization therefore means that people destroy the environment much more than ever before.

The population increase means that more people need more things that are manufactured by the industries. This means even more factories and even more emissions. The industrial revolution... provides us with technological aids, more food, and better medicine, so that many more people can survive. At the same time, it has damaged the environment in many places.

During the industrial revolution, roads and railways develop. Raw materials and finished products need to be transported. People also begin travelling between countries in a whole new way. The world becomes globalized.