INDUSTRIALIZATION IN THE WEST

The West in the Age of Industrialization and Imperialism

As far-reaching as the transformation of Western civilization since the Renaissance had been, no one around 1800 could have predicted the even more profound changes that would occur in the nineteenth century. When Napoleon met defeat at Waterloo in 1815, Europe's population was 200 million, with as many as 25 million people of European descent living in the rest of the world. When World War I began in 1914, these numbers stood at 450 million and 150 million, respectively. In 1815 most Europeans and Americans lived in rural villages and worked the land; during the nineteenth century millions migrated from the countryside to cities, and by 1914, in highly industrialized nations such as Great Britain, a majority of the population was urban. In 1815, despite two decades of democratic revolution, most governments were aristocratic and monarchical; in 1914 representative assemblies and universal manhood suffrage were the norm in most of Europe, the United States, and the British dominions of Canada, Australia. and New Zealand. In 1815 most governments limited their activities to defense, the preservation of law and order, and some economic regulation; in 1914 governments in most industrialized states subsidized education, sponsored scientific research, oversaw public health, monitored industry, and provided social welfare care and, as a result, had grown enormously. 

Europe's global role also changed dramatically. In 1815 it appeared that the Europeans' political power was declining throughout the world. Great Britain no longer ruled its thirteen North American colonies, and Portugal and Spain were losing their colonies in Central and South America. Decisions by several European states to outlaw the slave trade seemed a step toward a diminished role for Europeans in Africa, and nothing Suggested that the Western nations had the power or inclination to extend their influence in Southwest or east Asia. Only the continuing expansion of British power in India hinted at what the nineteenth century would bring -- the West's take-over of Africa and southeast Asia, its Intrusions into the politics of China and southwest Asia, and its unparalleled control of world trade and investment. 

To a certain extent, these and other changes resulted from the acceleration of trends deeply rooted in Europe's past. The scientific and technological developments of the nineteenth century, for example, were built on a foundation dating to the Middle Ages. Nor was the profusion of a new literary, philosophical, and artistic movements unique intellectual ferment had characterized Europe since the twelfth century. Late nineteenth-century imperialism , but another chapter in the long story of Western expansionism, and the struggle of disenfranchised groups such as factory workers and w omen for political rights was the logical extension of the doctrines of equality and individual rights enunciated during the Enlightenment and French Revolution. 

The single most important cause of the West's transformation and expansion in the nineteenth century was the Industrial Revolution, a series of wide-ranging economic changes invoking the application of new technologies and energy sources to industrial production, Communication, and transportation. These changes began in England in the late eighteenth century when power-driven machines began to produce cotton textiles. By 1914 industrialization had taken root in Europe, Japan, and the United States and was spreading to Canada, Russia, and parts of Latin America. As much as the discovery of agriculture many centuries earlier, industrialization profoundly altered the human condition. 

Industrialization and Its Impact

The English were the first and for many decades the only people in the world to experience the material benefits and social costs of industrialization. By the 1760s, new mechanical devices were transforming the textile industry, and by the early 1800s, machines driven by steam engines were producing not just textiles but also a wide variety of other industrial goods. England's early industrial lead had multiple causes: an abundant labor supply, strong domestic and overseas markets, plentiful capital, a sound banking system, good transportation, rich coal deposits, a stable government, a favorable business climate, and, finally, a series of remarkable inventions that first transformed the textile industry and subsequently, a host of' others. 

During the nineteenth century industrialization spread from England to continental Europe, the United States, and Japan, and in the process changed considerably. The last three decades of the nineteenth century saw the appearance of larger forms of business organization such as corporations, monopolies, and cartels; the growing importance of finance capital, the introduction of petroleum and electricity as energy sources, and, most important, the application of new technologies, especially in chemistry, to thousands of industrial processes. 

With industrialization largely limited to Europe and the United States, the West's economic ascendancy was guaranteed. As Western businesses marketed their products throughout the world and as Western investors took control of the world's railroads, oil wells, mines, and factories, Europe and the United States established unprecedented dominion over the world's wealth and resources. Industrialization had its ugly side, however. Social dislocation, overcrowded cities, inadequate housing, worker exploitation. child labor, new extremes of wealth and poverty, political conflict, and Pollution were some of the costs that accompanied the transition from an agrarian to industrial society.