The Industrial and French Revolutions: Shaping the Contemporary Era

The Dawn of the Contemporary Era

The transition from the Modern Era to the Contemporary Era occurred in the late 18th century.

Political Transformation: The French Revolution

The French Revolution brought significant political changes. Absolute monarchies were replaced by republics and limited monarchies as forms of government. Liberalism substituted absolutism as the dominant ideology.

Socio-Economic Shifts: The Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution transformed society from an estate system to a stratified class society. Cities grew, capitalism became the dominant economic system, and the industrial economy began to displace the agricultural economy.

Capitalism and Economic Systems

Capitalism:

An economic system that aims to invest capital and generate profit. The means of production are privately owned.

Defining Key Concepts

Revolution:

A process involving global and deep changes affecting all aspects of humanity.

Process:

A set of related facts and events.

Economy:

Forms of production, exchange, and consumption of goods and services.

Productivity:

The amount of output produced by an employee in a given time. It is the relationship between time and quantity of production.

Before the Industrial Revolution, products were made by hand; later, they were produced using machines and factories.

The Factory System and Labor

The introduction of machines increased production and the profit of the bourgeoisie.

Factory Production Formula: Building + Machine + Worker = Factory

While artisans worked with their own tools in their properties, factory workers were not owners of the factories or machines; workers were salaried.

The Chain Reaction of Industrial Change

The Industrial Revolution created a chain reaction of interconnected changes:

• Economic Change: Factories and machines were introduced.
• Social Change: The working class (laborers/factory workers) emerged.
• Labor Response: Due to poor living conditions, workers formed trade unions (groups demanding better working conditions, hygiene, higher wages, and shorter working hours) and organized strikes.
• Ideological Change: Union ideology led to the rise of Socialism, an ideology criticizing capitalism, championed by bourgeois thinkers.

Social Consequences of Industrialization

Estates:

Hereditary social groups that generally lacked vertical social mobility.

Bourgeoisie:

The social class composed of the owners of the means of production.

State:

A defined territory where people live under a government with established limits (borders).

Urbanization:

The increase in the number and size of cities.

Migration:

Movements of the population, including internal (within the country) and external (outside). A major cause of internal migration was the enclosure movement, forcing peasants who could not afford fences to sell their land to landowners and move from the countryside to the city to work as laborers.

Industrialization formed a class society (which allows for vertical social mobility, making it possible to ascend and descend socially) that replaced the estate system (which was based on hereditary life and generally lacked vertical social mobility).