Industrial Revolution
A term first coined in 1799 to describe the burst of major inventions and economic expansion that began in Britain in the late eighteenth century.
spinning jenny
A simple, inexpensive, hand-powered spinning machine created by James Hargreaves in 1765.
water frame
A spinning machine created by Richard Arkwright that had a capacity of several hundred spindles and used waterpower; it therefore required a larger and more specialized mill—a factory.
steam engines
A breakthrough invention by Thomas Savery in 1798 and Thomas Newcomen in 17-5 that burned coal to produce steam, which was then used to operate a pump; the early models were superseded by James Watt’s more efficient steam engine, patented in 1769.
Rocket
The name give to George Stephenson’s effective locomotive that was first tested in 1829 on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway at 35 miles per hour.
Crystal Palace
The location of the Great Exhibition in 1851 in London; an architectural masterpiece made entirely of glass and iron.
iron law of wages
Theory proposed by English economist David Ricardo suggesting the pressure of population growth prevents wages from rising above subsistence level.
tariff protection
A government’s way of supporting and aiding its own economy by laying high taxes on imported goods from other countries, as when the French responded to cheaper British goods flooding their country by imposing high tariffs on some imported products.
Factory Acts
English laws passed from 1802 to 1833 that limited the workday of child laborers and set minimum hygiene and safety requirements.
separate spheres
A gender division of labor with the wife at home as mother and homemaker and the husband as wage earner.
Mines Act of 1842
English law prohibiting underground work for all women and girls as well as boys under ten.
Luddites
Group of handicraft workers who attacked factories in northern England in 1811 and later, smashing the new machines that they believed were putting them out of work.
class-consciousness
Awareness of belonging to a distinct social and economic class whose interests might conflict with those of other classes.
Combination Acts
British laws passed in 1799 that outlawed unions and strikes, favoring capitalist business people over skilled artisans. Bitterly resented and widely disregarded by many craft guilds, the acts were repealed by Parliament in 1824.
Congress of Vienna
A meeting of the Quadruple Alliance (Russia, Prussia, Austria, and Great Britain), restoration France, and smaller European states to fashion a general peace settlement that began after the defeat of Napoleon’s France in 1814
Holy Alliance
An alliance formed by the conservative rules of Austria, Prussia, and Russia in September 1815 that became a symbol of repression of liberal and revolutionary movements all over Europe
Karlsbad Decrees
Issued in 1819, these repressive regulations were designed to uphold Metternich’s conservatism, requiring the German states to root out subversive ideas and squelch any liberal organizations.
liberalism
The principal ideas of this movement were quality and liberty; liberals demanded representative government and equality before the law as well as individual freedoms such as freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of worship, and freedom from arbitrary arrest.
laissez faire
A doctrine of economic liberalism that calls for unrestricted private enterprise and no government interference on the economy.
nationalism
The idea that each people had its own genius and specific identity that manifested itself especially in a common language and history, and often led to the desire for an independent political state.
socialism
A backlash against the emergence of individualism and the fragmentation of industrial society, and a move toward cooperation and a sense of community; the key ideas were economic planning, greater social equality, and state regulation of property.
Marxism
An influential political program based on the socialist ideas of German radical Karl Marx, which called for a working-class revolution to overthrow capitalist society and establish a Communist state.
bourgeoisie
The middle-class minority who owned the means of production and, according to Marx, exploited the working-class proletariat
proletariat
The industrial working class who, according to Marx, were unfairly exploited by the profit-seeking bourgeoisie.
Romanticism
An artistic movement at its height from about 1790 to the 1840s that was a part in a revolt against classicism and the Enlightenment, characterized by a belief in emotional exuberance, unrestrained imagination, and spontaneity in both art and personal life.
Corn Laws
British laws governing the import and export of grain, which were revised in 1815 to prohibit the importation of foreign grain unless the price at home rose to improbable levels, thus benefiting the aristocracy but making food prices high for working people.
Battle of Peterloo
The army’s violent suppression of a protest that took place at Saint Peter’s fields in Manchester in reaction to the revision of the Corn Laws.
Reform Bill of 1832
A major British political reform that increased the number of male voters by about 50 percent and gave political representation to new industrial areas.
Great Famine
The result of four years of potato crop failure in the late 1840s in Ireland, a country that had grown dependent on potatoes as a dietary staple.
Greater Germany
A liberal plan for German national unification that included the German-speaking parts of the Austrian Empire, put forth at the national parliament in 1848 but rejected by Austrian rulers.
Klemens von Metternich
austrian conservative guy
Karl Marx
communist guy
Saint Simon
french philosopher
the needs of an industrial class, which he also referred to as the working class, needed to be recognized and fulfilled to have an effective society and an efficient economy
Eugene Delacroix
french romantic artist
Germaine de Stael
french romantic writer
William Blake
english romantic poet
Robert Owen
factory owner supported reform