Industrial Revolution

Industrial Revolution

he shift from making goods by hand to making them by machine, which began in Great Britain in the late 1700s.

Enclosure Movement:

The practice of wealthy landowners fencing off common lands, forcing many peasants to move to towns to find work in factories.

Capital:

Money available for investment in machines and factories to produce profit.

Entrepreneur:

A person who organizes, manages, and takes on the risks of a business to find new ways to make profits.

Cottage Industry:

A method of production in which tasks are done by individuals in their rural homes, common before the factory system.

Steam Engine:

Improved by James Watt, this machine became a key power source of the Industrial Revolution, allowing factories to be located away from rivers.

Puddling:

A process developed by Henry Cort to produce a higher quality of iron by using coke to burn away impurities.

Bessemer Process:

A cheap and efficient way to manufacture steel by blasting air through molten iron to remove impurities.

Internal Combustion Engine:

An engine that burns fuel inside the engine; it gave rise to automobiles and airplanes.

Eli Whitney:

Invented the cotton gin, which cleaned seeds from cotton much faster than by hand.

Urbanization:

The rapid growth of and migration to cities as people moved from rural areas to find industrial jobs.

Industrial Middle Class:

A new social class made up of the people who built the factories, bought the machines, and developed the markets.

Proletariat:

The industrial working class who owned no property and lived by working for wages.

Laissez-faire:

An economic policy where the government does not interfere with or regulate business and industry.

Socialism:

An economic system where society (usually the government) owns and controls some means of production, such as factories and utilities.

Karl Marx:

Author of The Communist Manifesto who believed history was a struggle between classes and predicted the proletariat would eventually overthrow the bourgeoisie.

Communism:

A system of social organization in which all property is held in common, often associated with a classless society.

Labor Unions:

Organizations formed by workers to negotiate for better wages, shorter hours, and safer working conditions.

Realism:

A mid-19th-century movement in literature and art that sought to portray lower- and middle-class life as it actually was (e.g., Charles Dickens).

Second Industrial Revolution:

A period of rapid growth in the late 19th century driven by steel, chemicals, electricity, and petroleum.

Thomas Edison:

American inventor who created the first commercially practical incandescent light bulb

Alexander Graham Bell:

Invented the telephone in 1876, revolutionizing long-distance communication.

Guglielmo Marconi:

Sent the first radio waves across the Atlantic in 1901.

Assembly Line:

A manufacturing method pioneered by Henry Ford that allowed for the mass production of goods, making them much cheaper.

Urbanization:

By the late 19th century, more people lived in cities than in the country due to improvements in public health and sanitation (like clean water and sewage systems).

The Elite:

The top 5% of the population that controlled 30% to 40% of the wealth; it consisted of wealthy upper-middle-class bankers/merchants and traditional landed aristocrats.

White-Collar Workers:

A new group between the lower-middle class and the working class, including traveling salespeople, bookkeepers, and telephone operators.

Feminism:

The movement for women's rights, which in this era focused on the right to own property, access to universities, and suffrage (the right to vote).

Mass Education:

Governments began providing universal primary education to create better-educated voters and patriotic citizens.

Revisionists:

Marxists who rejected the idea of a violent revolution, believing workers should instead use democratic means to achieve socialism.

Ministerial Responsibility:

The democratic principle that a prime minister is responsible to an elected legislative body, not to a king or president.

Duma:

The legislative assembly created by Czar Nicholas II in Russia after the Revolution of 1905, though it had limited power.

Triple Alliance:

A military alliance between Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy formed in 1882.

Triple Entente:

An informal understanding between Great Britain, France, and Russia formed in 1907 to counter the Triple Alliance.

Marie Curie:

A French scientist who discovered that an element called radium gave off energy (radiation) from within the atom itself.

Albert Einstein:

Developed the special theory of relativity, stating that space and time are not absolute but relative to the observer.

Sigmund Freud:

A doctor from Vienna who proposed psychoanalysis, a method by which a therapist probes a patient’s memory for repressed thoughts.

Modernism:

A movement in which writers and artists rebelled against traditional styles, leading to new forms like Cubism (Pablo Picasso) and abstract art.

Social Darwinism:

The controversial theory that social progress comes from "the struggle for survival" as the fit advance and the weak decline.