Industrial Revolution & Economic Theories

Vocabulary flashcards covering the key concepts, inventions, legislation, economic theories, and historical events of the Industrial Revolution, economic systems, the Irish Potato Famine, and the Meiji Restoration.

Enclosure Movement

A movement in 18th-century England where wealthy landowners bought up small farms and fenced off common lands, increasing farming productivity but forcing poor farm families into cities to seek factory jobs.

Agrarian Revolution

A period of improved farming methods, such as breeding larger livestock, crop rotation with turnips and clover, and the use of new tools, which produced more food with fewer workers and freed rural labor for factories.

Seed Drill

An agricultural tool invented by Jethro Tull that planted seeds deep in neat, straight rows rather than scattering them by hand, protecting them from birds and producing larger harvests.

Steam Engine

An engine improved by James Watt that used coal power instead of water, allowing factories to be built away from rivers and powering trains, ships, and mining pumps.

Domestic System (Putting-out System)

A production method where goods were made slowly by hand at home in rural villages, allowing workers to manage their own daily schedules.

Factory System

A centralized manufacturing system where goods were produced rapidly using large machines powered by water or steam, requiring workers to follow strict clock schedules for 12 to 16 hours a day.

Factory Act of 1833

Early British legislation passed after government investigations that placed legal limits on child working hours in factories.

Mines Act of 1842

A British law that prohibited women and young boys from working underground in coal and iron mines.

Labor Unions

Organizations formed by industrial workers to hold strikes and demand higher wages, safer working environments, and shorter workdays.

Chartists

A British reform group that organized and campaigned for working-class men to obtain the right to vote.

Luddites

A group of English workers who attacked and smashed factory machinery because automated machines were eliminating traditional hand-weaving livelihoods.

Traditional Economy

An economic system in which choices regarding production and distribution are governed by custom, tradition, and family habits passed down across generations.

Market Economy

An economic system where decisions are made by individual buyers and private businesses based on supply and demand, with minimal government intervention.

Command Economy

An economic system in which the central government makes all major economic choices, determining what is produced, how it is made, and who receives it.

Capitalism

An economic system where land and businesses are privately owned by individuals or companies, with prices and production set by open market competition and individual profit.

Socialism

An economic philosophy in which major industries and natural resources are owned by the government or the public to distribute wealth more fairly and protect workers.

Communism

A far-left economic system where all property and businesses are owned collectively by the public, resulting in no social classes, no private property, and no government once established.

Marxism

The political and economic theories developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, which assert that history is driven by class struggle and predict a working-class overthrow of factory owners.

Laissez-faire

An economic doctrine advocating for free-market capitalism and opposing government interference or regulation in business and trade.

Invisible Hand

A concept introduced by Adam Smith proposing that individuals pursuing their own self-interest in a competitive market naturally and unintentionally benefit the broader economy.

Thomas Malthus

A classical economist and author of An Essay on the Principle of Population who claimed that human population grows faster than the food supply, causing inevitable poverty and famine.

Irish Potato Famine

A catastrophic agricultural failure between 1845 and 1852 caused by potato blight, resulting in over one million deaths and over one million emigrants departing Ireland.

Meiji Restoration

The 1868 political transformation in Japan that restored direct imperial power to Emperor Meiji, eliminated feudalism, and initiated rapid, state-planned industrialization and military expansion.

Zaibatsu

Wealthy Japanese business families who purchased state-funded factories, mines, and railroads from the Meiji government to manage major private enterprises.